SEC v. Victory Ho (insider trading, 2017)

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 July 2017 the SEC charged Victory Ho, a Louisiana convenience store owner, with buying Shaw Group call options before the announced acquisition by Chicago Bridge & Iron and selling for a profit of about $295,000. An SEC notice lists a judgment in the case dated October 15, 2019; its terms were not read.

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 complaint, filed July 11, 2017 in the Western District of Louisiana, alleged that Ho obtained confidential information about the Shaw merger through two people with ties to a Shaw employee, then spent about $8,000, all the money in a new brokerage account, on 296 short-term call options on July 27, 2012, the last trading day before the July 30 announcement. He sold shortly after for about $295,000.

The SEC sought an injunction, disgorgement, interest and a civil penalty. The release records no outcome, and it refers to a parallel criminal matter. The outcome is described below.

Outcome: an SEC notice of covered action lists case 17-cv-00895 in the Western District of Louisiana with a judgment date of October 15, 2019. That notice is the only primary source opened: it does not say whether the judgment was by consent or after contest, and it gives no injunction, disgorgement, interest or penalty amounts, so none are recorded here. The judgment document and any criminal outcome were not located. Checked on 2026-10-04.

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. 2017-07-12 Litigation release published
2. 2019-10-15 Judgment entered (date per SEC notice of covered action)

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 notice of covered action listing the judgment date

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.