Securities Fraud & Insider Trading

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On September 30, 2026, the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit revived a putative securities fraud class action against Ocugen, Inc., a small, publicly traded pharmaceutical company, holding that a stock’s rapid price recovery after a corrective disclosure cannot, on its own, prove that an earlier misstatement was immaterial. In re Ocugen, Inc. Securities Litigation, No. 25-2653 (3d Cir. Sept. 30, 2026). The decision abrogates what the court itself labeled the “Oran-Burlington rule,” a line of Third Circuit precedent stretching back nearly 30 years. For practitioners defending or bringing Section 10(b) claims in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, or Delaware federal courts, the ruling removes a familiar tool from the motion-to-dismiss toolkit and replaces it with a more fact-intensive materiality inquiry.

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Federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York have filed criminal complaints against two former Robinhood Markets, Inc. engineers, alleging they used confidential information about upcoming cryptocurrency listings on Robinhood Crypto to trade profitably on Hyperliquid, an offshore decentralized derivatives exchange. The scheme came to light after Robinhood conducted an internal investigation and referred the matter to law enforcement. The cases illustrate an emerging enforcement priority: prosecutors are extending traditional insider-trading theories to decentralized, unregistered derivatives markets.

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On September 22, 2026, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s Division of Market Oversight (DMO) issued CFTC Staff Advisory No. 26-27, providing the agency’s most detailed guidance to date on a fast-growing category of prediction market products known as “mention markets.” The advisory addresses event contracts that settle based on whether an individual will say or “mention” certain words, attend or appear at an event, or otherwise interact with another person. While the advisory does not ban these contracts outright or create new legal obligations, it establishes a framework of heightened scrutiny that designated contract markets (DCMs) should expect when listing or seeking to list such products.

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We just released Episode 48 of the False Claims Act Insights podcast where Drew Canning and I discuss what boards can do to avoid False Claims Act problems years in advance through good governance.

While most FCA episodes focus on legal theories, enforcement trends, or specific cases, this conversation examines the strategic and operational decisions…

On September 16, 2026, Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) Director of Enforcement David Miller spoke at DACOM NYC 2026, offering a statement on how the CFTC intends to police prediction markets, carbon credit programs, and traditional derivatives markets alike. Director Miller’s remarks touched on insider trading, market manipulation, retail fraud, and the Bank Secrecy Act and included extended comments on how the agency views the intersection of new event-contract markets with decades-old regulatory principles.

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Today, Sarah Razaq Sallis authored The Beat Goes On: Investors, Enforcers and the Potential Consequences of a Longer Reporting Cycle in the Dow Jones Risk Journal. Sarah explains that the Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) proposal to let companies shift from quarterly to semiannual reporting may be an efficiency win, but a real risk…

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On August 18, 2026, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC or the Commission) charged the former CEO, CFO, and Senior Director of Finance of a Texas-based auto lending company with securities fraud in connection with the collapse of the subprime auto lender. The SEC’s press release and the complaint filed the same day in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York lay out what the SEC alleges was a years-long scheme to keep a failing lender’s securitization pipeline alive by using collateral that, according to the SEC, was in significant part either nonexistent or already pledged to other parties.

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We just released Episode 47 of the False Claims Act Insights podcast where Kip Randall, Abe Souza, and I look at how False Claims Act enforcement has changed so far in 2026.

We discuss how DOJ’s creation of a new fraud division tangentially impacts the False Claims Act, and how 2026 has seen…

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On August 18, 2026, the Securities and Exchange Commission (the SEC or the Commission) proposed a new rule, titled “Regulation Crypto Assets,” that would create a tailored securities offering regime for certain investment contracts involving crypto assets (the Proposal). The Proposal is the SEC’s first attempt at formal crypto rulemaking, following the Commission’s March 2026 interpretation clarifying how the federal securities laws apply to certain crypto assets and transactions involving crypto assets.