For those that have never heard of Sam and Charles Wyly, well here’s all you really need to know. They are huge donors to conservative candidates and causes and were some of the major funding for the Swiftboat Vets. Well and this – now they are accused of over $550 million in insider trading by the SEC:
Sam and Charles Wyly, Dallas billionaire investors known for their support of conservative candidates and causes, made $550 million in undisclosed profits through 13 years of insider trading, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission lawsuit filed Thursday.
In a 78-page complaint filed in a Manhattan federal court in New York, the SEC said the Wylys held and traded tens of millions of shares in companies on whose boards they served and “defrauded the investing public” by misrepresenting their ownership and trading of those stocks.
“The apparatus of the fraud was an elaborate sham system of trusts and subsidiary companies located in the Isle of Man and the Cayman Islands … created by and at the direction of the Wylys,” the SEC complaint stated.
This isn’t the first run-in the Wyly’s have had with the SEC. Their troubles date all the way back to 1979.