Disney employee caught selling inside information

Walt Disney Co.’s head of corporate communications, Zenia Mucha’s assistant Bonnie Hoxie and her boyfriend Yonni Sebbag plotted to sell confidential Disney information to investment companies.

The duo sent out mails to about 33 companies, including hedge funds, offering to share Disney’s quarterly earnings report with them in exchange of money.

Releasing Disney’s confidential information
“Hi, I have access to Disney's (DIS) quarterly earnings report before its release on 05/03/10,” read the letter, sent Mar 5. “I am willing to share this information for a fee that we can determine later.”

The United States attorney for the Southern District of New York has charged the two with conspiracy and wire fraud. Hoxie, 33, and Sebbag, 29, could face up to 25 years in prison and a $250,000 fine, if convicted on all charges.

A federal judge released Hoxie on a $50,000 bond but ordered that Sebbag must be held as a potential flight risk.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has also sued the two.

“Hoxie and Sebbag stole Disney’s confidential pre-release earnings information and put it up for sale,” said Robert Khuzami, the SEC’s enforcement director. “Fortunately, multiple hedge funds reported the illicit scheme, and the SEC and criminal law enforcement authorities acted quickly to stop this brazen attempt to establish an ongoing insider-trading business.”

FBI undercover agents, who were posing as interested stock traders, revealed that Sebbag told them he "was able and willing to provide them non-public information on a regular basis in the future.”

Designer dreams destroyed
The couple was desperately waiting for the quarterly earnings data to materialize so they could get some easy cash that they could spend on luxuries.

"Here is the bag that you are going to get for me," Hoxie had written in an email she sent to Sebbag. It also included “a picture of an expensive Stella McCartney designer handbag available for $700 at Neiman Marcus,” the SEC said in a companion civil complaint filed in New York federal court.

Sebbag said he’d buy her the bag “next week” and she replied with further demands of other expensive things.

The couple was not planning to limit themselves to this deal; they were looking to make it a regular business.

FBI undercover agents, who were posing as interested stock traders, revealed that Sebbag told them he "was able and willing to provide them non-public information on a regular basis in the future," according to the complaint filed by the SEC complaint. At one point Sebagg, who used the pseudonym ‘Jonathan Cyrus’ for email exchanges, also demanded $20000 in compensation.

Selling off ABC network?
Hoxie and Sebbag told their potential clients that Disney “is in serious and advanced negotiations with two private equity firms to sell them the ABC network.”

However, Disney issued a statement on Wednesday denying any such talks. “The reference in the complaint to conversations regarding the ABC Network were and are false,” it said.

The complaint does not mention Mucha or any wrongdoing on her part.

“The Walt Disney Company has been fully cooperating with this investigation,” it said.