SEC v. John Patrick O'Neill (insider trading, 2016)

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 2016, the Securities and Exchange Commission reported that Robert H. Bray, a Watertown real-estate developer, was sentenced to two years in prison and fined $1 million, and John Patrick O'Neill to one year of probation, in the parallel criminal cases over insider trading that underlie its civil action. The release states no SEC monetary relief.

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 May 13, 2016 as litigation release 23539. The respondents named are Robert H. Bray and John Patrick O'Neill (2 individuals, 0 entities). The release reports that on May 9, 2016 Bray was sentenced to two years in prison and three years of supervised release, with forfeiture of $299,762.15 and a $1 million fine, after a January 2016 jury verdict convicting him of securities fraud through insider trading, and that on May 12, 2016 O'Neill, a cooperating witness who had pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit securities fraud, was sentenced to one year of probation. The SEC's civil action, filed in August 2014 in the District of Massachusetts, is the related case; the release states no relief in it. The figures are from the criminal sentences.

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. 2016-05-13 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.