Recent news of Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, being investigate for Insider Buying has everyone looking for how this could happen and who in the past has been prosecuted for insider trading. It’s usually hedge fund owners that get in trouble for insider trading but there have been others including Martha Stewart, George Soros, and Marylin Star. When someone purchases stock on insider knowledge not available to the public, they can be prosecuted.

Elon Musk

On August 7th of last month, Tesla CEO Elon Musk tweeted that he had secured funding to take the company private from Saudi sources at the price of $420/share. This public announcement caused the price of the stock to climb dramatically (8 percent) before being halted. The problem is that Musk had never made a public announcement about the company in this fashion before. And he could be in trouble if the price per share is inaccurate or all the funding is not actually secured. Look for private investors to sue Musk for his announcement if they feel they lost money because of the public announcement on Twitter.

Martha Stewart

Martha Stewart got in trouble in 2004 for insider trading of ImClone stock and had to serve 5 months in prison with an additional 2 years of supervised time including some home confinement. Stewart sold ImClone stock two days prior to the stock falling 16% after an FDA decision on the biotech’s most important drug. She avoided $45,000 in loses by selling when she did. It was discovered that she acting on advise from a financial advisor who had knowledge of ImClone CEO Sam Waksal (Net Worth $70 million) selling $5 million of the stock. The reason he was selling was unknow at the time. Because she did not know the reason for the trade and did not have company information at her disposal, she was not charged with insider trading. But she obstructed justice during the investigation and was sentence for that crime.