Ex-Nvidia engineer slapped with insider-trading fine

Last Friday in Santa Clara, California district court, a former Nvidia employee was found guilty and fined for insider trading. Judge James Ware of San Jose ordered David Chang, a former engineer at the Bay Area chipset maker, to pay $116,000 in damages. The fines were the result of a civil suit by the Security and Exchange Commission. Chang plead guilty to criminal charges of fraud earlier this year, for which he received another fine and a several-month home-detention sentence.

Chang's legal woes started in March 2000, when he received a confidential e-mail from Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang confirming its deal to produce components for Microsoft's Xbox console. (The chipset maker had been in a bidding war with Gigapixel for the Xbox contract for several months.) Armed with this knowledge, Chang picked up two batches of 1,000 shares himself for around $59 and $82 a share, respectively. (He also told an associate, Qwai Hoong Low, to buy up Nvidia stock.) After the deal was announced on March 7, 2000, Nvidia's stock price shot up to $118 in three days. Chang sold his shares for a $60,000 profit, shortly after which he and Low were arrested and charged.

The full SEC complaint can be read here.