SEC v. Carol E. Cohen and Austin Rotter (insider trading, 2021)

Settled

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In November 2021 the SEC charged Carol Cohen and her son Austin Rotter with trading in The Trade Desk before its positive 2018 earnings report on information Rotter obtained at a public relations firm. They agreed to penalties of $91,292 and $45,646, subject to court approval.

The record

What was ordered

Civil penalty

$137k

Disgorgement

—

Prejudgment interest

—

Total relief

$137k

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 settled complaint on November 23, 2021 as litigation release 25268, filed in the Southern District of New York.

The complaint alleges Rotter breached confidentiality agreements by calling his mother before the announcement, and that Cohen bought about $86,000 of stock and netted $45,646 when the price rose 37%.

The stored penalty is the sum of both respondents' amounts; the earlier record showed only Cohen's and a status of judgment, but the proposed settlement awaited court approval.

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.

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. 2021-11-23 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.

Related actions

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

Record added September 10, 2026. submit a correction.