{"id":217105,"date":"2022-06-13T14:18:02","date_gmt":"2022-06-13T21:18:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.casino.org\/news\/?p=217105"},"modified":"2022-06-16T16:08:01","modified_gmt":"2022-06-16T23:08:01","slug":"sec-charges-former-penn-employee-with-insider-trading","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.casino.org\/news\/sec-charges-former-penn-employee-with-insider-trading\/","title":{"rendered":"Former Penn National Software Engineer Charged with Insider Trading"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) today said it\u2019s charging an ex-Penn National Gaming (NASDAQ:PENN) employee with insider trading. The charge stems from the casino operator\u2019s $2 billion purchase of Score Media and Gaming.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_217107\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-217107\" data-style=\"width: 1200px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-217107\" src=\"https:\/\/www.casino.org\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/SEC-142x80.jpg\" alt=\"Penn insider trading\" width=\"1200\" height=\"676\" \/><figcaption  id=\"caption-attachment-217107\"class=\"text-description\">The Securities and Exchange Commission headquarters in Washington, DC. The commission is charging a former Penn National worker with insider trading. (Image: <em>New York Times<\/em>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>In a complaint filed in federal district court in Philadelphia, the SEC alleges David Roda, a former software engineer at Penn\u2019s Penn Interactive Ventures (PIV) unit, purchased call options on Score Media before his employer announced the acquisition to the public.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"main-blockquote\"><p><strong>In breach of his duties, Roda purchased 500 out-of-the-money call options on Score Media in the weeks and days leading up to the announcement of the acquisition,\u201d<\/strong> said the SEC.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The commission asserts that as a PIV staffer, Roda obtained privileged information about Penn potentially acquiring Score Media \u201cwith admonitions not to trade on that information.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In an effort to capitalize on the approval of single-game wagering in Canada and to bring gaming technology in-house, Penn announced the $2 billion cash and stock takeover of Score Media <a href=\"https:\/\/www.casino.org\/news\/penn-buys-score-media-for-2b-gains-coveted-canada-access\/\">in August 2021<\/a>. Before that, the regional casino giant owned 4.7% of the Canadian media and gaming outfit.<\/p>\n<h2>Roda Made Bank, Tipped Friend<\/h2>\n<p>Options are leveraged instruments, and calls \u2014 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.casino.org\/news\/barry-diller-activision-options-trade-catches-feds-attention\/\">the bullish contracts<\/a> \u2014 typically surged on mergers and acquisitions news, producing rapid, short-term gains for buyers who held the contracts before the news hit the wires.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The SEC claims that in addition to his purchase of 500 call options on Score Media, Roda tipped off a friend &#8212; Andrew Larkin &#8212; who purchased 375 shares of the Canadian company before Penn publicly announced the takeover.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>\u201cAccording to the SEC\u2019s complaint, Score Media\u2019s stock price increased nearly 80 percent after Penn National and Score Media publicly announced their deal, following which Roda and Larkin sold their holdings for unlawful profits of $560,762 and $5,602, respectively,\u201d notes the commission.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Both Philadelphia, Roda and Larkin are charged with violating the antifraud provisions in US securities laws. Separately, the US Attorney\u2019s Office for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania today unveiled criminal charges against Roda.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>\u201cWithout admitting or denying the allegations in the SEC\u2019s complaint, Larkin has agreed to be permanently enjoined from violating the antifraud provisions of the securities laws and to pay more than $11,000 in disgorgement and penalties,\u201d adds the SEC.<\/p>\n<p>A court must approve that settlement.<\/p>\n<h2>Insider Trading Popping Up Across Gaming Industry<\/h2>\n<p>The Larkin\u2019s and Roda\u2019s flap controversy isn\u2019t the first recent encounter of the gaming industry with insider trading.<\/p>\n<p>IAC\/InterActiveCorp (NASDAQ:IAC) Chairman Barry Diller, whose company is the largest non-institutional shareholder in MGM Resorts International (NYSE:MGM), is under federal investigation stemming from options trades on Activision before Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) <a href=\"https:\/\/www.casino.org\/news\/microsoft-goes-big-in-gaming-with-68-7-billion-activision-buy\/\">announced the acquiring<\/a> the <em>Call of Duty<\/em> publisher for $68.7 billion.<\/p>\n<p><strong>However, Diller was recently cleared for limited licensing by Nevada regulators.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Speaking of MGM, that company said in May it\u2019s offering $607 million for Sweden\u2019s LeoVegas. Last week, Sweden\u2019s Economic Crime Authority (SEC) said it\u2019s looking into <a href=\"https:\/\/www.casino.org\/news\/leovegas-facing-insider-trading-probe-stockholm-office-raided\/\">possible insider trading<\/a> in the gaming company\u2019s shares before the MGM announcement becomes public.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) today said it\u2019s charging an ex-Penn National Gaming (NASDAQ:PENN) employee with insider trading. The charge stems from the casino operator\u2019s $2 billion purchase of Score Media and Gaming. In a complaint filed in federal district court in Philadelphia, the SEC alleges David Roda, a former software engineer at Penn\u2019s [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":46,"featured_media":217107,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,60],"tags":[],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>SEC Charges Former Penn Employee With Insider Trading<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Former Penn National software engineer slapped with insider trading charges.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"noindex, follow\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"SEC Charges Former Penn Employee With Insider Trading\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Former Penn National software engineer slapped with insider trading charges.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.casino.org\/news\/sec-charges-former-penn-employee-with-insider-trading\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Casino.org\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/Casino.OrgNews\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2022-06-13T21:18:02+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2022-06-16T23:08:01+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.casino.org\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/SEC.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1600\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"901\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Todd Shriber\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@etfgodfather\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@Casino_Org\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Todd Shriber\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.casino.org\/news\/sec-charges-former-penn-employee-with-insider-trading\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.casino.org\/news\/sec-charges-former-penn-employee-with-insider-trading\/\",\"name\":\"SEC Charges Former Penn Employee With Insider Trading\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.casino.org\/news\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.casino.org\/news\/sec-charges-former-penn-employee-with-insider-trading\/#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.casino.org\/news\/sec-charges-former-penn-employee-with-insider-trading\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.casino.org\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/SEC.jpg\",\"datePublished\":\"2022-06-13T21:18:02+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2022-06-16T23:08:01+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.casino.org\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/f4cecf70a5032bc4e60eb73fc86d4a85\"},\"description\":\"Former Penn National software engineer slapped with insider trading charges.\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.casino.org\/news\/sec-charges-former-penn-employee-with-insider-trading\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.casino.org\/news\/sec-charges-former-penn-employee-with-insider-trading\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.casino.org\/news\/sec-charges-former-penn-employee-with-insider-trading\/#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.casino.org\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/SEC.jpg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.casino.org\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/SEC.jpg\",\"width\":1600,\"height\":901,\"caption\":\"The Securities and Exchange Commission headquarters in Washington, DC. The commission is charging a former Penn National worker with insider trading. (Image: New York Times)\"},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.casino.org\/news\/sec-charges-former-penn-employee-with-insider-trading\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"News\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.casino.org\/news\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Financial\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.casino.org\/news\/financial\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":3,\"name\":\"Former Penn National Software Engineer Charged with Insider Trading\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.casino.org\/news\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.casino.org\/news\/\",\"name\":\"Casino.org\",\"description\":\"Latest Casino and Gaming News\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.casino.org\/news\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.casino.org\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/f4cecf70a5032bc4e60eb73fc86d4a85\",\"name\":\"Todd Shriber\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.casino.org\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.casino.org\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/cropped-11-96x96.png\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.casino.org\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/cropped-11-96x96.png\",\"caption\":\"Todd Shriber\"},\"description\":\"Todd Shriber is a senior news reporter covering gaming financials, casino business, stocks, and mergers and acquisitions for Casino.org. Todd got his start in financial markets as a reporter with Bloomberg News. Later, he became a trader at a Southern California-based long\/short hedge fund, where he specialized in the trading sector and international ETFs leading up to and during the financial crisis. He joined Casino.org in 2019. Currently, Todd analyzes, researches, and writes on ETFs for various web-based publications and financial services firms. Shriber has been featured and quoted in Barron's, CNBC.com, and The Wall Street Journal. His work can also be found on Benzinga, ETF Daily News, ETF Trends, MarketWatch, Fox Business, and Nasdaq.com. He currently resides in Las Vegas, where he enjoys golf and taking his black lab to the dog park. He's also an avid sports fan and likes to wager on college football and the NBA. You can also find him at the three-card poker and roulette table, even though he knows better. 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The commission is charging a former Penn National worker with insider trading. 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