Former Equifax employee Sudhakar Reddy Bonthu pleaded guilty to insider trading Monday.
Bonthu was a software development manager at Equifax during a cyberattack last year that exposed personal information like social security numbers and birth dates of more than 147 million people.
Richard Best is director of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s regional office in Atlanta.
“Bonthu used confidential information to determine that his company had suffered a massive data breach and then violated company policy to illegally profit from it,” Best said. “Corporate employees cannot take advantage of their access to sensitive information and unlawfully benefit from it.”
Bonthu made a profit of more than $75,000 by buying 86 put options in Equifax stock that expired on Sept. 15, 2017. The company made the data breach public on Sept. 7.
