SEC v. One or More Unknown Traders in the Securities of Anadarko Petroleum Corp. (insider trading, 2019)

Alleged — pending

These are allegations. SEC has filed an action; nothing in it has been proven, and the respondents have not been found liable. Everything described on this page is what the regulator alleges, not what a court has found. See our editorial policy.

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In April 2019 the SEC obtained an emergency order freezing assets tied to suspicious Anadarko option trades, placed through UK and Cyprus accounts ahead of Chevron's takeover announcement, that yielded about $2.5 million. The traders were unidentified and no final outcome is recorded.

The record

What was ordered

Civil penalty

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Disgorgement

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Prejudgment interest

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Total relief

—

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 complaint, against unknown traders, alleged that foreign brokerage accounts bought out-of-the-money call options through U.S. brokers in the days before the April 12, 2019 announcement and then sold them or exercised them for profit. The emergency order froze the assets. No judgment is recorded.

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. 2019-04-29 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. If this matter has since resolved, been withdrawn or been dismissed, we want to know: submit a correction.