SEC v. Bill Tsai (insider trading, 2019)

Settled

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In August 2019 the SEC charged a junior investment banker, Bill Tsai, with trading Electronics for Imaging options ahead of its acquisition announcement, for about $98,750 in profit. On 16 December 2019 a New York federal court entered a consent judgment with an injunction and disgorgement and interest to be offset by criminal forfeiture. He was sentenced to probation in a parallel criminal case and consented to an industry bar.

The record

What was ordered

Civil penalty

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Disgorgement

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Prejudgment interest

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Total relief

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Alleged gain

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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 this matter on August 16, 2019 as release LR-24568. The respondents named are Bill Tsai (1 individual, 0 entities).

This library tags the matter as insider trading, based on the conduct the regulator describes. Each tag links to a page explaining how that technique works, what statute it engages, and what penalties comparable actions have attracted. The tagging is ours, not the regulator's: agencies charge statutory provisions, not technique names.

The conduct is recorded against options.

The release references a parallel criminal proceeding. Where a criminal case exists, the civil and criminal outcomes are recorded separately, because they resolve on different standards of proof.

Outcome. The SEC's January 2020 release says the Southern District of New York entered a final consent judgment on 16 December 2019. It enjoins Tsai from Section 10(b) and Rule 10b-5 violations and makes him liable for disgorgement of his trading profits with interest, offset by any criminal forfeiture; it does not state the amount, so no figure is recorded. In a separate administrative proceeding on 23 December 2019 he consented to an industry-wide association bar and a penny stock bar. The release also says he pleaded guilty in the parallel criminal case and in January 2020 received five years of probation and a forfeiture of about $126,000. The judgment was by consent, so the allegations were not tried.

What technique is this, and how does it work?

This action is tagged with one technique in our taxonomy. The tagging is ours: regulators charge statutory provisions, not technique names, so the mapping is an editorial judgement described in our editorial policy.

• Insider trading — see how it works, what statute it engages, and every other action tagged the same way.

Timeline

1. 2019-08-16 Litigation release published
2. 2019-12-16 Final consent judgment entered against Tsai
3. 2019-12-23 SEC administrative order bars Tsai from the securities industry and penny stock offerings (on consent, per the SEC release)

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
• SEC litigation release 24732 (final judgment)

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.

Same matter

The library links these 2 records because they appear to concern one matter: the same lead defendant, an overlapping technique tag and close filing dates, or a shared court docket or a release that cites the other. Records are listed by date filed.

This grouping is the library's, made by matching names, techniques, dates and citations when the site is built. It is not the regulator's or a court's determination that the records are one case, and it errs towards missing a link rather than making a false one.

Related actions

Other actions in the library sharing at least one technique tag with this one.

Record added September 10, 2026. submit a correction.