SEC v. Apostolos Trovias (2022)

Judgment entered

Checked against the primary document on October 3, 2026. The library's summary, tags and figures for this record were compared with the regulator's own document by an AI model (Claude) following written instructions, with sampled and disputed records read a second time. No lawyer has reviewed them. A checked record can still contain errors, and checked does not mean endorsed. See how we check records or report a correction.

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In July 2022 the SEC announced a final judgment against Greek national Apostolos Trovias, who sold purported insider trading tips on dark web marketplaces under the name TheBull. He was enjoined and ordered to pay about $6,702, deemed satisfied by forfeiture in his criminal case.

The record

Structured fields for this action, as recorded in our case library.
Agency	SEC
Release number	LR-25447
Date filed	2022-07-21
Date resolved	2022-07-21
Status	judgment
Criminal parallel	Yes: sentenced (Apostolos Trovias (time served)), U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York
Defendants	Apostolos Trovias (individual)
Cited as charged or alleged	Exchange Act s.10(b) and Rule 10b-5 (statutes and rules cited in the document; not a finding that they were violated)
Techniques

What was ordered

Civil penalty: —
Disgorgement: $6.7k
Prejudgment interest: —
Total relief: $6.7k
Alleged gain: —

A dash means the release did not state a figure we could extract, not that the figure is zero. Penalty and disgorgement are stored separately so aggregates across the library do not double-count the same dollars.

What is alleged to have happened

The Securities and Exchange Commission announced the judgment on July 21, 2022 as litigation release 25447; the court entered it on July 19 in the Southern District of New York.

The complaint alleged Trovias claimed to sell order-book data supplied by an employee of a trading firm, to over 100 subscribers, when he was in fact selling pre-release earnings reports. He pleaded guilty to securities fraud in April 2022 and was sentenced to time served.

The charge is a fraudulent scheme to sell supposed tips, not trading on inside information, so the insider-trading tag was removed. The judgment also bars him from operating a website that offers nonpublic issuer information.

For the regulator's own account of the facts, read the primary document linked above. This page deliberately summarises the structured record rather than reproducing the release.

Timeline

2022-07-21 Litigation release published

Primary documents

Everything on this page derives from the documents below. Where our summary and the primary document disagree, the primary document is right.

SEC litigation release

The linked release is a work of the United States government and is not subject to copyright. Our summary and narrative above are our own writing.

Record added September 10, 2026. submit a correction.