SEC v. Dubovoy, et al. (hack to trade, 2018)

Settled

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In July 2018 the SEC reported that a Brooklyn jury had convicted Vitaly Korchevsky and Vladislav Khalupsky in the criminal case behind SEC v. Dubovoy, the hacked-press-release trading case. In June 2020 the SEC announced court-approved settlements with eight civil defendants including Khalupsky, with monetary liabilities of more than $14 million in total; the releases do not show how Korchevsky's civil claims ended.

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 development on July 10, 2018 as litigation release LR-24193, in SEC v. Dubovoy, et al., civil action 2:15-cv-06076 in the District of New Jersey, filed August 10, 2015. The parallel criminal case is United States v. Korchevsky, No. 1:15-cr-00381 in the Eastern District of New York. The release names two defendants, Vitaly Korchevsky and Vladislav Khalupsky (2 individuals, 0 entities), former registered representatives whom the SEC had charged with over 30 others. Earlier versions listed "Dubovoy, et al." and showed the matter as settled.

On July 6, 2018 a jury returned guilty verdicts against both on all counts. The SEC's case alleges that hackers broke into newswire services, stole hundreds of earnings releases before publication and passed them to traders in Russia, Ukraine, Cyprus, France and three U.S. states, who traded in stocks and options in the short window before release, sometimes sharing profits with the hackers. The release says the SEC had recovered over $53 million from 13 settling defendants and that Arkadiy and Igor Dubovoy, Aleksandr Garkusha and Leonid Momotok had pleaded guilty.

In 2018 the civil action was still continuing, and none of the recoveries was attributed to Korchevsky or Khalupsky.

A June 2020 SEC release shows the civil case settled for eight defendants, Khalupsky among them. The court entered final judgments enjoining them from antifraud violations. Seven of them (including Khalupsky) owe disgorgement and interest that is deemed satisfied by criminal restitution and forfeiture orders, while Memelland Investments, which was not charged criminally, agreed to pay disgorgement and a penalty. The SEC says total liabilities exceed $14 million but gives no per-defendant figures, so no money is recorded here, and the release gives the announcement date rather than the dates of the individual judgments. Korchevsky is not among the eight, and the release says litigation continued against other defendants, so how his civil claims ended is not shown here and was not checked further.

For the regulator's own account of the facts, read the primary document linked above.

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.

• Hack to trade — see how it works, what statute it engages, and every other action tagged the same way.

Timeline

1. 2018-07-10 Litigation release published
2. 2020-06-10 SEC announces court-approved settlements with eight defendants including Khalupsky

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 LR-24833 (settlements)

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 3 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 20, 2026. submit a correction.