To get a sense of how old and long-drawn-out the SEC’s insider trading lawsuit against Mark Cuban is, consider this: the company in which he allegedly insider traded was Mamma.com. The .com was right there in the name. Future generations — hell, present generations — will indiscriminately add “.com” to the end of words to create an old-timey feel, the way we doeth with “-eth.”1
Actually it happened in 2004, and I don’t even need the “allegedly”: there’s no dispute that Cuban insider traded. Everyone agrees that:
- Mamma.com was planning to sell some stock in a PIPE offering which would, inevitably, drive down its stock price;
- Mamma.com’s CEO called Cuban and told him about the planned PIPE offering in advance, hoping to get Cuban to buy more stock;
- Cuban instead sold the stock he already had, prior to the public announcement of the PIPE deal; and
- Then the PIPE was announced and the stock dropped.

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So he had material nonpublic information, and he traded on it, and he avoided losses by doing so. INSIDER TRADING. The only debate is whether he insider traded illegally, which, as I often find myself reminding people, is a separate question. The SEC’s lawsuit2 turns not on the facts above, but on whether Cuban agreed not to trade before learning the inside information. Here the evidence is less clear, but there’s enough evidence that he did for the SEC to survive summary judgment yesterday and take the case to trial. Here is that evidence:3