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In The Future, 20-Something BF/GF Will Restrict Their Insider Trading Chatter To Pillow Talk Instead Of Work Email

When you're 26 and 27 it's hard not to commit securities fraud in the dumbest way possible.
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Here are some thing that can lead to grave acts of stupidity:

  • Being young
  • Being in love
  • Being a 20-something working in finance in New York and the associated feeling of "I make 120k/year, I must be hot sh*t"

Put them all together and...well, let's just say Colin Whelehan and Sheren Tsai have been there.

Colin Whelehan, 26, went to Harvard, and Sheren Tsai, 27, went to New York University. The couple met when they went to work at the same bank shortly after graduating from college, the government said...In late 2015, Whelehan learned of the Apollo takeover of ADT, after Apollo asked the firm if its corporate parent, a sovereign wealth fund, would invest with Apollo to help finance the deal. The firm ended up advising Apollo, and Whelehan was on the deal team that had access to Apollo’s data room containing key financial information about the transaction. He sent the tip about the deal from his work e-mail account to hers, according to the complaint.

Not a great idea, guys! But wait, there's more:

Tsai panicked when the price dipped before the deal was announced. "So when is it going to BOUNCE," she wrote to Whelehan in one exchange quoted in the court papers. "I wish I had bought it now, man." He replied: "I told you to average down," a reference to buying more shares at lower prices. But she said she had already put in too much cash to buy more. Tsai was caught just three days after the deal was announced on Feb. 16, when her firm’s chief compliance officer asked her why she had bought the ADT shares in January. She initially claimed she invested because she thought it was a good company, until confronted with the e-mails with Whelehan on her work account.

Boy Meets Girl, Boy Gives Inside Information to Girl, SEC Says [Bloomberg]
shershegoes [Instagram]

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