A Texas jury found Mark Cuban, the billionaire owner of the NBA's Dallas Mavericks, not liable of insider trading on Wednesday for the sale of his stock in an Internet company from 2004, CNBC reported. Cuban had faced up to $2.5 million in fines if found guilty.
Prosecutors accused the "Shark Tank" guest host of insider trading, alleging that he "avoided more than $750,000 in losses by illegally selling 600,000 shares of Canadian search engine company Mamma.com in June, 2004," news reports said. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) said that Cuban traded shares based on confidential information he received from the site's CEO Guy Faure.
The CEO testified this month that Cuban agreed to a confidential discussion in the deal just prior to Cuban selling his 6 percent stake in the company. Cuban denied having the conversation, insisting that he would not enter an agreement without documentation in writing, according to his testimony, news reports said.
Cuban's defense team "argued the... transaction was in fact public and could in no way be considered confidential information," CNBC reported. An SEC filing indicated it was "available to anyone in the world" and had been submitted by Mamma.com in March 2004, three months before the sale.
Cuban's attorney argued that one of the reasons he sold his stock was concern over ties between Mamma.com and Irving Kott, a convicted stock swindler, The Associated Press reported.
In addition to owning the 2011 NBA Champion Dallas Mavericks, Cuban also owns Landmark Theaters, Magnolia Pictures, and is chairman of the HDTV cable network AXS TV. He is also the co-founder of 2929 Entertainment. His net worth is $2.5 billion, according to Forbes magazine.
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