Traders and hackers earned $100M on stocks from stealing news

A group of traders and web hackers accumulated over $100M by gaining access to corporate press releases on news websites Market Wired, PR Newswire and Business Wire before the news were published. The hackers have been trading the advance stolen news to Wall Street traders for five years, fed authorities caught on Tuesday.

In a report from the Big Story, authorities charge a group of stock traders and two Ukrainian hackers on Tuesday for illegally making profits sneaking 150,000 press releases from news distributors, PR Newswire (New York), Business Wire (San Francisco) and Market Wired (Toronto) which contains corporate information and revenue figures.

The group of hackers taught the stock traders how to view the stolen news via a video tutorial and was paid a portion of traders' profit, prosecutors said in a report from Aljazeera America.

According to the Securities and Exchange Commission, the cyber attack started from 2010 until this May.  

Nine people are facing criminal charges for making $30M illegal profits. Warrants were released for four Ukraine nationals and five were arrested in New Jersey, Brooklyn, New York and Newark.

Sixteen stock traders and 14 companies took advantage of the press releases resulting in a total of $100M illegal proceeds from companies including Dealertrack Technologies Inc., Dendreon Corp, Panera Bread Co., Acme Packet Inc., Align Technology Inc., Caterpillar Inc. and Edwards Lifesciences Corp.

Four traders were charged in Brooklyn which include Vitaly Korchevsky (manager from Pennsylvania), Vladislav Khalupsky (Brooklyn and Ukraine), Leonid Momotok and Alexander Garkusha (both from Georgia).

Separate charges were filed in New Jersey to Ivan Turchynov and Oleksandr Ieremenko (hackers from Ukraine), Pavel Dubovoy (traders from Ukraine), Arkadiy Dubovoy and Igor Dubovoy (father and son traders from Georgia).

Arkadiy and son Igor are said to operate a brokerage account making over $11M in illegal trading. The two were scheduled for a bail hearing on Thursday.

The prosecutors said the group had used 800 of 150, 000 press releases trading them hours to three days before the news were publicized. Traders used them to bet on stocks. A positive report could cause a company's stock to go up while a negative report could make it drop.

PR Newswire CEO Robert Gray said in a report from Fox Business, "PR Newswire has cooperated with the relevant government agencies conducting the investigation that led to today's charges and we would like to commend the U.S. Government for their diligence and continued focus on this matter."

Business Wire remarked in a statement on CNN Money they are currently collaborating with the Justice Department. By now, they hired a cyber security team to run a test in their system and protect it from future attacks.

The hackers have made over $600,000 in 2011 from Caterpillar Inc. stocks prior to a news about the company's rise of profits by 27%.

In March 2012, the indictment states that Ieremenko had cracked 15 Business Wire employees log in details on his chat message to Turchynov.

In 2013, the two gained $1.4M from Silicon Valley's Align Technology after ripping off the report that it had raised revenue for over 20%.

U.S. attorney for New Jersey Paul Fishman said the fraud has been divulged several times before and the hackers were kicked out of the website's systems, but they manage to get back by sending emails containing links that collect the admin's login details.