SEC v. Shaohua (Michael) Yin, et al. (insider trading, 2024)
Judgment entered
Checked against the primary document on October 4, 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.
In August 2024 the Securities and Exchange Commission announced a final judgment against Shaohua (Michael) Yin, a Hong Kong private equity partner charged with trading DreamWorks Animation and Lattice Semiconductor shares through five nominee accounts, for alleged profits of $29 million on DreamWorks and about $7 million on Lattice. The judgment imposes a $39.5 million penalty paid from frozen funds and an injunction; his alleged Lattice source, Benjamin Bin Chow, was separately enjoined, barred and convicted.
The record
| Agency | SEC |
|---|---|
| Release number | LR-26093 |
| Date filed | 2024-08-30 |
| Date resolved | 2024-08-30 |
| Status | judgment |
| Asset class | bonds, equities |
| Criminal parallel | No |
| Bars imposed | registration bar |
| Defendants | Shaohua (Michael) Yin ; Benjamin Bin Chow |
| Cited as charged or alleged | Exchange Act s.10(b) and Rule 10b-5 ; 18 U.S.C. 371 (conspiracy) ; Exchange Act s.32(a) (15 U.S.C. 78ff) |
| Techniques | Insider trading |
What was ordered
- Civil penalty
- —
- Disgorgement
- —
- Prejudgment interest
- —
- Total relief
- —
- Alleged gain
- $29m
What is alleged to have happened
The Securities and Exchange Commission announced this judgment on August 30, 2024 as release LR-26093, in a Southern District of New York case begun in 2017. The final judgment was entered on August 16, 2024 and concludes the SEC's litigation.
The amended complaint alleged that Yin amassed more than $56 million of DreamWorks stock ahead of Comcast's April 2016 acquisition and over $44 million of Lattice stock ahead of its November 2016 sale. Chow's judgment was entered in August 2022 and a broker-dealer and adviser bar followed in September 2022.
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.
Money note: the dollar amounts in this record's text describe the $39.5 million penalty in the August 2024 final judgment; to avoid counting the same amounts twice, the money fields are left empty here and the figures are held on the record for the same case under release LR-23747 (sec-shaohua-michael-yin-et-al-insider-trading-2017).
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
- 2024-08-30 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.
Same matter
The library links these 2 records because they appear to concern one matter: the same lead defendant, an overlapping technique tag and close filing dates, or a shared court docket or a release that cites the other. Records are listed by date filed.
| Date filed | Agency | Record | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2017-02-10 | SEC | SEC v. Shaohua (Michael) Yin, et al. (insider trading, 2017) | Settled |
| 2024-08-30 | SEC | SEC v. Shaohua (Michael) Yin, et al. (insider trading, 2024) | Judgment entered |
Related actions
Other actions in the library sharing at least one technique tag with this one.
| Action | Agency | Filed | Technique | Penalty | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SEC v. Trijya Vakil and Neeraj Visen (insider trading, 2026) | SEC | 2026-09-04 | Insider Trading | $109k | settled |
| CFTC v. Gabriel Perez (insider trading, 2026) | CFTC | 2026-08-28 | Insider Trading | $65k | judgment |
| SEC v. Gavin Wolfe and others (insider trading, 2026) | SEC | 2026-08-21 | Insider Trading | — | filed |
| SEC v. Jesse R. Mitchell (insider trading, 2026) | SEC | 2026-08-21 | Insider Trading | — | filed |
| SEBI v. Arun Kumar Somani and others (insider trading review, Indian Oil Corporation, 2026) | SEBI (India) | 2026-08-13 | Insider Trading | — | dismissed |
| SEC v. Benjamin Tesfaye (insider trading, 2026) | SEC | 2026-08-11 | Insider Trading | $18.7k | settled |