SEC v. William T. Walters, et al. (insider trading, 2018)

Settled

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In April 2018 a federal court approved settlements between the SEC and William Walters and Dean Foods director Thomas Davis in an insider trading case. Walters agreed to disgorge $19,004,429.26 plus interest, and Davis agreed to settle charges that he tipped Walters.

The record

What was ordered

Civil penalty

—

Disgorgement

$19m

Prejudgment interest

—

Total relief

$19m

Alleged gain

—

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 settlements on April 30, 2018 as litigation release 24125, in a case filed in May 2016.

The complaint alleges Davis, a Dean Foods board member who owed Walters money, regularly passed him inside information, using prepaid phones, in return for nearly $1 million in benefits, and that Walters made millions trading on it.

The record previously said the matter was dismissed; the court approved the settlements on April 17, 2018.

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. 2018-04-30 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.

• SEC litigation release

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.