Stock traders in Malta in international securities fraud scheme

Stock traders in Malta, New York, Cyprus, France and Russia and computer hackers in Ukraine made as much as $100 million in illegal profits over five years by conspiring to use information stolen from thousands of corporate press statements before their public release, US authorities said. Prosecutors announced charges against nine people in an insider-trading case that marks the first time criminal charges have been brought for a securities fraud scheme involving hacked inside information, in this instance 150,000 press releases from distributors Business Wire, Marketwired and PR Newswire. "This is the story of a traditional securities fraud scheme with a twist - one that employed a contemporary approach to a conventional crime," Diego Rodriguez, FBI assistant director-in-charge, said at a news conference. Prosecutors said the Ukraine-based hackers, who were given "shopping lists" of press releases by the traders, improperly accessed press statements before the distributors planned to release them to the public. The hackers created a "video tutorial" to help traders see the stolen releases and were paid a portion of the profits from trades based on the information in them,...