The Securities and Exchange Commission announced that Robert Cohen and Joseph Sansone have been named co-chiefs of the Division of Enforcement’s Market Abuse Unit.
The Market Abuse Unit is a national specialized unit that focuses on complex insider trading rings and other abusive trading schemes and misconduct. The two have served as the unit’s acting co-chiefs since the departure last month of Daniel Hawke, its inaugural chief.
Cohen led the investigation of the New York Stock Exchange’s improper distribution of market data feeds that resulted in the SEC’s first penalty against a stock exchange. He supervises an ongoing action against a Bulgarian trader for manipulating stocks through false SEC EDGAR filings and insider trading actions involving tips passed by post-it notes at Grand Central Terminal. He also supervised the first cases charging violations of the Market Access Rule.
Sansone’s work includes actions charging 34 defendants in a scheme to trade on nonpublic information hacked from newswire services, expert networks cases against corporate insiders who provided trading tips to hedge fund clients, and failure-to-supervise charges against SAC Capital’s founder. He also supervised a recent proceeding against a dark pool operator that misused subscriber trading information and together with Mr. Cohen, oversaw the SEC’s action against the Direct Edge exchanges for failing to describe complex order types.
Before joining the SEC in 2004, Cohen worked for six years as a litigation associate at two national law firms in New York and Baltimore and served as a law clerk to the Alexander Williams Jr. on the U.S. District Court in Maryland.
Sansone joined the SEC in 2007 after working for nearly six years as a litigation associate in New York and serving as a law clerk to the Nathaniel Jones on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.
