Insider Trading Charges for Mark Cuban

NEW
YORK, November 18: Entrepreneur Mark Cuban, the cofounder of HDTV
and the owner of the Dallas Mavericks basketball team, has been charged with
insider trading by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

According to published reports,
the SEC alleges that Cuban, in 2004, sold 600,000 shares in the Internet search
company Mamma.com after receiving confidential information from the outfit.
Cuban is said to have known that Mamma.com's stock price was going to fall
after a public offering; and it did. Cuban is said to have avoided losses of
more than $750,000 by selling off the shares when he did. (Mamma.com is now
known as Copernic Inc., specializing in search software and Internet ad
solutions.)

In a statement released to
the New York Times, Cuban stated: "I am disappointed
that the Commission chose to bring this case based upon its Enforcement staff's
win-at-any-cost ambitions. The staff's process was result-oriented, facts be
damned. The government's claims are false and they will be proven to be
so."

Cuban
is facing the insider trading charges in a civil suit filed in Dallas, Texas,
and is likely to receive a fine of about $1.5 million if found guilty. He does
not face any criminal charges.

Together
with Todd Wagner, Cuban owns a variety of media holdings under the 2929
Entertainment banner. These include
the movie-production companies HDNet Films and 2929 Productions, the
distributor Magnolia Pictures, the home-video distributor Magnolia Home
Entertainment, the Landmark Theatres art-house chain, the high-definition cable
networks HDNet and HDNet Movies and a minority stake in Lionsgate. Cuban also
hosted his own reality show, The
Benefactor on ABC in 2004, and appeared as a contestant on Dancing with the Stars.

—By Mansha Daswani