GMRC Employee Charged with Insider Trading Worth $7 Million

A hearing is scheduled today for former Green Mountain Coffee Roasters administrator Chad McGinnis, who is charged with insider trading that led to some $7 million in personal gains for him and a friend.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filed the sealed charges late last month, accusing McGinnis of repeatedly using quarterly earnings data to trade in advance of public release. The SEC says McGinnis was also tipping off a longtime friend and business associate, Sergey Pugach, who is also facing charges from the SEC.

“McGinnis and Pugach exploited confidential company financial data to conduct their insider trading scheme to the detriment of Green Mountain Coffee and its shareholders,” said Donald Hoerl, Director of the SEC’s Denver Regional Office. “The timing of their trades was consistently and exceptionally successful, but their scheme ultimately was not.”

McGinnis is a former systems administrator, and the SEC alleges that his position in the IT department allowed him access to GMRC’s servers, where he obtained company earnings information in advance of public release. The SEC says he and Pugach communicated about the earnings and other trading data through their personal computers, their cell phones and the cell phones of their spouses.