What do Mark Cuban and Martha Stewart Have in Common?

November 17, Dr. Browntorious

Well in breaking news about Mark Cuban, the owner of the Dallas Mavericks, apparently he has been charged by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for insider trading.

“The Texas billionaire businessman was charged with selling 600,000 shares of stock from an Internet search engine company, Mamma.com Incorporated, based on non-public information regarding an impending stock offering by the firm…

The SEC complaint filed in US District Court for northern Texas alleges that in June of 2004, Mamma.com invited Cuban to participate in the stock offering after he agreed to keep the information confidential. Cuban knew the offering would be conducted at a discount to prevailing market price and would dilute holdings of existing shareholders, the complaint claims.Within 4 hours of learning of the plan, Cuban told his broker to sell his entire stake in Mamma.com, the SEC claims.“

I’m amazed that it has taken the SEC over 4 years from the time of incident to lay these charges on Cuban. Just when you think things couldn’t be going any worse for Cuban given the Dallas Mavericks slow start to the new NBA Season. Ah well, from what we understand Cuban will most likely just have to pay back $750,000 he would have likely lost had he held onto the stock until the information had gone public that he was privy too. That may sound like a lot of money to you or I, but given the fact that Cuban has been more than willing to spent over a million dollars paying fines to the NBA for complaining about NBA referees and rules to the media, I doubt he’ll miss that $750 grand that much!