SEC v. One or More Unknown Traders in the Securities of Bioverativ, Inc. (insider trading, 2018)

Judgment entered

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In January 2018 the SEC obtained an emergency order freezing the proceeds of suspicious Bioverativ option trades, placed through Swiss accounts ahead of Sanofi's $11.6 billion takeover announcement, that yielded about $5 million. The SEC later named Swiss resident Roland Mathys, and on December 2, 2020 the court entered a default judgment against him with a $9,889,369 penalty.

The record

What was ordered

Civil penalty

$9.9m

Disgorgement

—

Prejudgment interest

—

Total relief

$9.9m

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 a U.S. brokerage in the days before the announcement, in some cases nearly all of the market in a given contract. The emergency order froze the proceeds and required the repatriation of funds and preservation of evidence. The SEC charged violations of Sections 10(b) and 14(e).

Outcome: on June 13, 2019 the SEC amended its complaint to name Roland M. Mathys, alleging he got confidential information about the Sanofi deal from a Sanofi insider's son and turned about $169,000 into about $5 million (release LR-24500). Release LR-24984 (December 15, 2020) says the Southern District of New York entered a default judgment against Mathys on December 2, 2020, after he did not respond, enjoining him and ordering a civil penalty of $9,889,369, which the release says is double his trading profits; it adds that prosecutors indicted him and obtained a civil forfeiture of the proceeds. The allegations were deemed established by default rather than tried. The releases do not say whether the penalty was collected, or whether any other trader was identified.

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. 2018-01-26 Litigation release published
2. 2019-06-13 SEC amends complaint to name Roland Mathys
3. 2020-12-02 Default judgment against Mathys with $9,889,369 penalty

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-24500 (Mathys named)
• SEC litigation release LR-24984 (default judgment)

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.