Toomre Capital Markets LLC ("TCM") first wrote about the use of credit default swaps ("CDS") as a means of insider-trading back in October 2006 in the post Possible Insider Trading Using Credit-Default Swaps?? On May 5th 2009, the Securities and Exchange Commission finally filed its first case alleging that credit-default swaps were used to facilitate illegal insider-trading activities. Hopefully, this will be just the first of many such cases filed involving the abuse of insider information and the credit default swap market.

According to this story on Bloomberg News written by David Scheer, the SEC has now alleged that a Deutsche Bank AG salesman, one Jon-Paul Rorech, 36, passed on information about a pending bond sale to a now former Millennium Partners LP money manager, one Renato Negrin, 45, who then bought credit default swaps that resulted in profits of $1.2 million once the VNU high-yield bond transaction was formally announced. The securities market regulator wants these two individuals to forfeit "unlawful trading profits" and pay unspecified fines. “Rorech and Negrin checked their integrity at the door and schemed to engage in insider trading of CDS to the detriment of investors and our markets,” Scott Friestad, the SEC’s deputy enforcement director, said in the statement announcing the lawsuit.