SEC v. Stephen E. Buyer, et al. (insider trading, 2022)

Dismissed

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In July 2022 the SEC charged former congressman Stephen Buyer with insider trading in Sprint and Navigant securities and named his wife as a relief defendant. On August 24, 2026 the SEC filed a joint stipulation to dismiss the action against both of them with prejudice. The SEC's release says the dismissal does not necessarily reflect its position on any other case.

The record

What was ordered

Civil penalty

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Disgorgement

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Prejudgment interest

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Total relief

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Alleged gain

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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 Securities and Exchange Commission announced the complaint on July 25, 2022 as litigation release 25448, filed in the Southern District of New York.

Buyer's consulting firm served T-Mobile and Guidehouse. The complaint alleges he bought $568,000 of Sprint stock in several accounts after learning of the plan in March 2018, then over $1 million of Navigant before the August 2019 announcement.

A parallel criminal case was announced; no civil outcome is reported. The earlier record named 'Stephen E. Buyer, et al.' with an unknown status.

Outcome. SEC Litigation Release 26621 (August 26, 2026) states that on August 24, 2026 the SEC filed a joint stipulation with Stephen Buyer and relief defendant Joni Buyer to dismiss the action, with prejudice. The release quotes the stipulation as saying the SEC's decision to seek dismissal does not necessarily reflect its position on any other case, and it gives no reasons. No money was ordered and no bar was imposed in this action; an earlier version of this record listed an officer-and-director bar that the SEC had sought, and none was imposed. The allegations in the complaint were not adjudicated. The release does not address any parallel criminal matter.

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.

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. 2022-07-25 Litigation release published
2. 2026-08-24 SEC and defendants file joint stipulation dismissing the action with prejudice

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 26621 (dismissal)

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.