SEC v. Joseph Spera, et al. (insider trading, 2018)

Settled

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The SEC's December 2017 case against former day trader Joseph Spera and his company Joleine, Inc. over insider trading ahead of secondary offerings was announced in a March 2018 release. The docket shows Spera and Joleine consented to a partial final judgment entered on May 9, 2018, and the civil case was administratively terminated on April 16, 2019; the money terms were not found.

The record

What was ordered

Civil penalty

—

Disgorgement

—

Prejudgment interest

—

Total relief

—

Alleged gain

$5.5m

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 SEC alleged that Spera and former colleagues induced investment bankers to bring them over the wall, then broke their confidentiality agreements and traded ahead of announcements, violating Section 17(a), Section 10(b), Rule 10b-5 and Rule 105. Four others had been charged earlier, and litigation continued against the alleged ringleader. The $5.5 million recorded as the gain is the ring's total, not Spera's share.

The District of New Jersey docket for SEC v. Spera (3:17-cv-12875) shows that a partial final consent judgment as to Joseph Spera and Joleine, Inc. was signed on May 9, 2018, and that the civil case was marked terminated on April 16, 2019. A partial judgment normally leaves the amount of monetary relief to be decided later, and the docket text read here does not show any disgorgement or penalty figure, so none is recorded. A parallel criminal docket against Spera was also marked terminated on January 31, 2019, but its outcome and any sentence were not read. A separate SEC case against Spera and Brian Hirsch (3:17-cv-13266) was open for longer and is not covered by this record.

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. 2018-03-26 Litigation release published
2. 2018-05-09 Final partial consent judgment entered as to Joseph Spera and Joleine, Inc.
3. 2019-04-16 Civil case terminated on the docket

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
• Court docket, SEC v. Spera, D.N.J. 3:17-cv-12875 (CourtListener)
• Partial final consent judgment, 9 May 2018 (SEC copy)

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.