SEC v. Peter C. Chang (insider trading, 2017)

Settled

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In September 2017 the SEC charged Peter C. Chang, founder and CEO of Alliance Fiber Optic Products, with using secret accounts in his wife's and brother's names to trade ahead of earnings announcements and a takeover. A consent final judgment dated September 17, 2018 orders disgorgement of $1,727,864, interest of $129,710 and a $500,000 penalty, and bars him from serving as an officer or director.

The record

What was ordered

Civil penalty

$500k

Disgorgement

$1.7m

Prejudgment interest

$130k

Total relief

$2.4m

Alleged gain

$2m

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 alleged that Chang traded company stock through accounts in family members' names, often from his work computer after board meetings, and tipped his brother in Taiwan ahead of two negative earnings announcements in 2015 and the 2016 announcement of Corning's tender offer. He allegedly posed as his brother in communications with a broker and obscured his relationship with his wife when FINRA asked.

Outcome: the final judgment posted by the SEC, from the Northern District of California and signed on September 17, 2018, records that Chang consented to its entry and waived findings of fact. It permanently enjoins him under Sections 10(b), 14(e) and 16(a), bars him from acting as an officer or director of a public issuer, and orders $1,727,864 in disgorgement plus $129,710 in prejudgment interest, of which $804,827 is offset by the stipulated orders in the criminal case United States v. Chang, and a $500,000 civil penalty. The copy we opened is headed "proposed" but carries the judge's signature and date. We did not open the criminal outcome, so no sentence is recorded.

This library tags the matter as insider trading, based on the conduct the regulator describes. The tagging is ours, not the regulator's: agencies charge statutory provisions, not technique names.

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. 2017-09-20 Litigation release published
2. 2018-09-17 Consent final judgment entered (N.D. Cal.)

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
• Final judgment as to Peter C. Chang (N.D. Cal., September 17, 2018)

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.