NEW YORK (AP) - A Goldman Sachs vice president was arrested Thursday in California on insider-trading charges filed in a New York court.
Woojae Jung awaited a court appearance in federal court in San Francisco to face six counts of securities fraud and a conspiracy charge.
Manhattan U.S. Attorney Geoffrey S. Berman said Jung “violated his duty to his company and traded on stolen insider information, over and over again.”
A lawyer for Jung did not immediately comment.
Jung, who lives in San Francisco, was accused in court papers of trading the securities of a dozen companies based on inside information. Authorities said he made more than $130,000 illegally from 2015 to 2017.
The Securities and Exchange Commission brought related civil charges against Jung, who worked in San Francisco and New York.
Goldman Sachs spokesman Michael DuVally said Jung has been placed on leave.
“We are aware of the situation regarding Mr. Jung and are cooperating with legal authorities on the matter,” he said.
The chief of the SEC’s Market Abuse Unit, Joseph Sansone, said Jung violated his employer’s rules about outside investment accounts when he carried out illegal trades through a brokerage account held in the name of a friend in South Korea.
“Like others before him, Jung’s alleged scheme failed when our data analysis uncovered the account’s suspicious trading pattern and, despite Jung’s attempts at evasion, traced the trading back to him,” Sansone said in a release.
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