A Swiss man has settled up with America’s Securities and Exchange Commission over alleged insider trading of stocks for AuthenTec, a fingerprint biometrics company purchased by Apple back in 2012.
The allegation is that Helmut Anscheringer got a tip from a friend related to an executive at AuthenTec that the company was about to be acquired by Apple, and that he thereupon purchased stocks of the company in anticipation of an increase in their value. Anscheringer has never admitted to the charges, nor has he repudiated them; but he has now agreed to pay back the $1.8 million in profits he acquired as a result of his actions, in addition to about a million dollars in fines.
The Apple acquisition didn’t work out very well for Morotola either. AuthenTec was the one biometrics technology provider that the company was looking to work with for the development of a fingerprint sensor for its Nexus 6 smartphone; the Apple acquisition effectively nixed that plan.
It did work out well for Apple, though. Soon after acquiring AuthenTec, Apple introduced its game-changing Touch ID fingerprint scanning system on its iPhone 5S and all subsequent mobile Apple devices.
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June 17, 2015 – by Alex Perala
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