Former Yahoo Exec, Danville Resident Plead Guilty to Insider Trading

Robert W. Kwok, a Danville resident and former Yahoo executive, pleaded guilty to insider training, Bloomberg is reporting.

Kwok, who was Yahoo's senior director of business management, passed illegal tips to Reema D. Shah, a portfolio manager at the Ameriprise unit, RiverSource Investments LLC, about the Internet company's quarterly earnings and information about outside purchases. In exchange for these tips, Shah reciprocated the exchange with information on potential business transaction of other publically traded companies, Bloomberg wrote.

Shah also pleaded guilty to insider training.

Both Shah and Kwok also settled related civil cases against them with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

Bloomberg.com, May 21:

“Kwok and Shah played a game of you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours,” Scott W. Friestad, an SEC lawyer, said in an e-mailed statement. “When corporate executives and mutual fund professionals misuse their access to confidential information, they undermine the integrity of our markets and violate the trust placed in them by investors.”

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