SEC v. Steven B. Hart (2015)

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.

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In February 2015 the SEC published a release reporting that Steven B. Hart, a former investment management employee, had been criminally charged with obstruction of justice and perjury during an earlier SEC investigation. He pleaded guilty on March 13, 2015 and was sentenced on August 6, 2015 to four months in prison. The release itself states no new monetary figure.

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 this matter on February 18, 2015 as litigation release 23200. The respondent named is Steven B. Hart (1 individual). The new charges, announced by the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, are obstruction of justice and perjury committed during an SEC investigation. The release recounts, as background, that Hart had already agreed in December 2012 to a federal injunction, payments of more than $1.3 million and an industry bar to settle SEC charges over cross trades and trading ahead of confidential offerings.

What the release announces is the obstruction and perjury prosecution, not trading, so this library no longer tags this record as insider trading and does not carry the earlier settlement's figures on it. No other technique fits, so it carries no technique tag.

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.

The U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York reported that Hart pleaded guilty on March 13, 2015 to a two-count criminal information and that on August 6, 2015 he was sentenced to four months in prison by U.S. District Judge Katherine Polk Failla. The office's account says he gave false sworn testimony to the SEC and impersonated his firm's president when the SEC telephoned. The press release read does not mention any fine or supervised release, so none is recorded here, and this record concerns the criminal obstruction case rather than the earlier SEC settlement.

Timeline

1. 2015-02-18 Litigation release published
2. 2015-03-13 Hart pleads guilty to obstruction of justice and perjury
3. 2015-08-06 Hart sentenced to four months in prison

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
• U.S. Attorney SDNY: guilty plea (March 2015)
• U.S. Attorney SDNY: sentencing press release (7 August 2015)

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.

Record added September 10, 2026. submit a correction.