On July 29, 2021, the United States District Court for the District of New Jersey entered a default judgment against Oleksandr Ieremenko and Andrey Sarafanov, who were charged in connection with a scheme to trade on nonpublic earnings information hacked from the SEC's EDGAR system.

The SEC's complaint alleged that Ieremenko, a Ukrainian hacker, gained access to EDGAR in 2016 and extracted EDGAR filings containing nonpublic earnings results. The information in the filings was allegedly passed to individuals, including Sarafanov, who used it to trade in the narrow window between when the files were extracted from SEC systems and when the companies released the information to the public. In total, eight traders allegedly traded before at least 157 earnings releases from May to October 2016 and generated at least $4.1 million in illegal profits. According to the complaint, Sarafanov's trading on hacked information resulted in profits of $1,094,435.

Ieremenko and Sarafanov did not answer or otherwise respond to the SEC's complaint. In its order entering a default judgment, the court permanently enjoined Ieremenko and Sarafanov from violating the antifraud provisions of Section 10(b) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and Rule 10b-5 thereunder and Section 17(a) of the Securities Act of 1933. The court also ordered Ieremenko and Sarafanov to pay penalties of $12,405,045 and $3,283,305, respectively.

The SEC's litigation was led by Christopher Bruckmann and Olivia Choe and supervised by Stephan Schlegelmilch. The SEC's investigation was conducted by Market Abuse and Cyber Unit staff David Bennett, Arsen Ablaev, Michael Baker, Jason Burt, Laura D'Allaird, Adam Gottlieb, James Scoggins, David Snyder, Jonathan Warner, Darren Boerner, John Marino, and John Rymas, and IT Forensics staff Ken Zavos, Douglas Bond, Stephen Haupt, Gi Nguyen, and Jennifer Ross. The investigation was supervised by Joseph G. Sansone and Carolyn Welshhans. The SEC appreciates the assistance of the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of New Jersey, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the U.S. Secret Service.