The Securities and Exchange Commission announced Friday that it had issued an emergency action against a New York City-based investment banker charged with performing insider trading through his ex-wife and father's brokerage accounts, netting him $1 million in illicit profits.
The SEC alleges that while working on Wall Street, Frank "Perk" Hixon Jr. regularly logged into the brokerage account of Destiny "Nicole" Robinson, the mother of his young child. He executed trades based on confidential information he obtained on the job, sometimes within minutes of learning it. Illegal trades also were made in his father's brokerage account.
"When his firm confronted him about the trading conducted in these accounts, Hixon Jr. pretended not to recognize the names of his father or his child's mother," the SEC says. "However, text messages between Hixon Jr. and Robinson suggest he was generating the illegal proceeds in lieu of formal child support payments."
In a parallel action, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York announced criminal charges against Hixon Jr.
A federal judge has granted the SEC's request and issued an emergency order freezing Robinson's brokerage account, which the SEC alleges contains the majority of proceeds from Hixon Jr.'s illegal trading with a balance of approximately $1.2 million.
