SEC v. Charlie Jinan Chen (insider trading, 2025)

Judgment entered

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In February 2025 the Securities and Exchange Commission announced a final judgment, entered January 30, against Charlie Jinan Chen, whom a jury found in February 2020 to have traded Vistaprint options ahead of five earnings announcements on information from a family friend who was an insider or the friend's spouse. The judgment enjoins him and orders an $892,827 civil penalty.

The record

What was ordered

Civil penalty

$893k

Disgorgement

—

Prejudgment interest

—

Total relief

$893k

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 this judgment on February 13, 2025 as release LR-26247, in a District of Massachusetts case filed April 5, 2018.

The jury found him liable on all counts under Section 10(b), Rule 10b-5 and Section 17(a) of the Securities Act. The release does not state a disgorgement figure.

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. 2025-02-13 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.