A former Equifax executive is facing insider trading charges for transactions made before the company announced a huge data breach.
The Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday said confidential information was used by 42-year-old Jun Ying to exercise his vested company stocks options and then sell them before the breach was publicly revealed.
Ying avoided $117,000 in losses in the sale.
In September 2017, Equifax announced that the personal information of more than 140 million Americans had been compromised in a massive data breach.
"Ying used confidential information to conclude that his company had suffered a massive data breach, and he dumped his stock before the news went public," said Richard Best, director of the SEC's Atlanta Regional Office, in a statement.
The SEC said its investigation is ongoing.