SiliconBeat

Well, that didn’t take long. It only took Mark Cuban one day to break his monastic vow of silence.

On Monday, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filed an insider trading case against Cuban. The feds claimed Cuban received confidential information from the CEO of Mamma.com and turned around and dumped his shares, saving $750,000 when the stock dropped the next day.

Perhaps the biggest shock of all came next: Cuban wrote on his blog that he would say nothing beyond issuing a statement about the charges.

Bo-ring!

Fortunately, that self-imposed muzzle came right off Tuesday. Read the rest of this entry »

Topic A for discussion this morning are the insider trading charges filed by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission against former “Dancing With The Stars” also-ran Mark Cuban. Oh, and he’s also the guy who owns the Dallas Mavericks, wants to buy the Chicago Cubs, and has an ego the size of Silicon Valley.

The complaint filed Monday contains the good, old-fashioned kind of allegations. You can read the full complaint here. In essence, the SEC claims that Cuban was an investor in the search engine Mamma.com. Back in 2004, the company briefed him on plans to issue a new round of stock, which would likely dilute shareholder value and cause the stock price to drop. Also, Cuban was ordered not to tell a soul.

According to the SEC, Cuban called his broker and told him to dump his Mamma.com shares. The stock dropped almost 10 percent the next day, and Cuban saved about $750,000. Nice (allegedly).

You can read the full complaint here. But Gawker provides the highlights here.

One of the tastiest morsels from the complaint comes from a conversation between Cuban and the Mamma.com CEO:

“The CEO prefaced the call by informing Cuban that he had confidential information to convey to him, and Cuban agreed that he would keep whatever information the CEO intended to share with him confidential. The CEO, in reliance on Cuban’s agreement to keep the information confidential, proceeded to tell Cuban about the PIPE offering. Cuban became very upset and angry during the conversation, and said, among other things, that he did not like PIPES because they dilute the existing shareholders. At the end of the call, Cuban told the CEO “Well, now I’m screwed. I can’t sell.”

But then, apparently, he did sell. Allegedly.

And what does Mr. Cuban have to say about all of this? Read the rest of this entry »