(Bloomberg) -- A British man was charged by US prosecutors with hacking corporate executives’ email accounts to obtain confidential earnings information.
Robert B. Westbook made more than $3 million trading on the hacked information ahead of public announcements, according to an indictment unsealed Friday by New Jersey federal prosecutors. The Securities and Exchange Commission also filed a parallel lawsuit.
Westbrook, 38, was arrested in the UK earlier this week pending a potential transfer to the US to face securities, wire and computer fraud charges, prosecutors said. In an initial appearance Thursday in a UK court, Westbrook didn’t consent to extradition and was taken into custody.
A British law firm representing Westbrook didn’t immediately respond to an email seeking comment.
Prosecutors said Westbrook hacked information about five public companies and traded in advance of more than a dozen earnings announcements in 2019 and 2020. The companies allegedly targeted by Westbrook weren’t identified by the government.
According to the SEC suit, Westbrook on one occasion in January 2019 reset the Microsoft Outlook password of a senior executive at an Orlando, Florida-based corporation and then used his account access to obtain documents and emails detailing non-public information about the company’s fourth quarter earnings. Westbrook also created auto-forwarding rules that sent all emails containing attachments to an anonymous account he had created.
According to the SEC, Westbrook purports to have studied economics at the University of Oxford and has worked in several positions in the financial industry in London.
The case is US v Westbrook, 23-cr-779, US District Court, District of New Jersey.
(Updates with attempts to reach lawyers in third paragraph.)
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