SEC Charges App Annie With Securities Fraud in $10 Million Settlement (protocol.com) 10
The Securities and Exchange Commission announced Tuesday that it's charging App Annie, the mobile app data provider, with securities fraud, accusing the company of "engaging in deceptive practices" and misrepresenting the origins of its data. From a report: App Annie will pay a $10 million settlement, according to the announcement, although the company has not admitted to any of the SEC's findings. According to the SEC, the company, which sells estimates on app downloads, usage and revenue, assured app businesses that the performance data they shared with App Annie would only be used in an anonymized way and run through an algorithm to generate performance estimates. But the SEC accuses App Annie and its former CEO and Chairman Bertrand Schmitt of reneging on that promise and using actual performance data to tweak its estimate models between 2014 and 2018. Then, the SEC alleges, the company sold that confidential data to trading firms, and misled those customers into thinking that the data was compliant with federal securities laws.
How do they get to not admit guilt but pay fines (Score:3)
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Guilt is done in court against actual people.
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Normal people don't get privileges like this
Sure we do. It’s called a no contest or nolo contendere plea. They’re used as a way of saying you don’t intend to fight the charges but will still accept the fine or other consequences. The effect is largely the same as a guilty plea in many jurisdictions, but you don’t actually admit guilt, which can provide you with legal benefits in some circumstances, beyond just saving face.
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Also worth noting: normal people typically don’t have regulators checking their activity for potentially illegal behavior as a matter of routine. So while we could suggest that these corporations have the privilege of being able to settle without admitting guilt, the fact is that they only had to settle in the first place because we have special government agencies and commissions set up to proactively breathe down their necks.
Which is as it should be, to be clear. I’m just pointing out that the
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which is why I was careful to say “normal people typically don’t” rather than “people never”. Sure, the SEC goes after people, but even then it isn’t normal people. It’s people with insider knowledge who abused it or totter similar situations. Similarly with the IRS, normal people typically don’t face an audit or any other interaction with the IRS, other than seeing that their return was accepted.
But, more importantly, even inasmuch as people do face the IRS o