The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission announced Wednesday that it has charged a petroleum engineer who worked at Houston-based Apache Corp. with insider trading.
The SEC, in court documents filed Wednesday in federal court in West Texas, said that Christopher J. Lollar has agreed to settle allegations that he “traded on nonpublic information” in advance a “market-moving announcement about the company’s discovery of a significant new oil source” by Apache.
Federal court documents show that Lollar, who performed geologic and geophysical work to explore and develop the newly discovered resource play called Alpine High, agreed to settle the charges with the SEC by paying $435,809.50 as a penalty and disgorgement.
White-collar and regulatory legal experts say this is the first insider trading case brought by the SEC in nearly five years.
“Insider trading is an attack on the integrity of our markets, and Lollar allegedly exploited confidential information from his employer to do it,” SEC Regional Director Shamoil T. Shipchandler said in a written statement. “Consequently, he was fired from his job and now must pay back more than double the amount of his ill-gotten gains.”
The SEC claims that Lollar conducted trades in Apache shares and call options just weeks before Apache publicly announced its Alpine High discovery on Sept. 7, 2016.
Lollar’s brokerage account skyrocketed approximately 2,700 percent after the announcement, and his alleged profits from insider trading totaled $214,295.07, according to Jessica B. Magee, Associate Director for Enforcement in the SEC’s Fort Worth Regional Office.
“As detailed in our complaint, a telling piece of evidence we gathered was a recorded phone call to his brokerage firm during which a concerned Lollar found a faster way to get money into his account after learning the funds in his initial deposit request wouldn’t have been available for trading until Sept. 8, too late for the Alpine High announcement,” Magee said.
Lollar agreed to pay disgorgement of $214,295.07, plus $7,219.36 in interest, and a $214,295.07 penalty, according to the SEC.
Lollar, who is represented by Kelly, Hart & Hallman partner Toby Galloway, settled the SEC’s charges without admitting or denying the allegations.
The other SEC lawyers who worked on the insider trading case are Tamara F. McCreary, Ty S. Martinez and Christopher Davis from the Fort Worth office.