Nine people have been charged over their role in the hack of a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission database to steal confidential information later used to profit from stock trading.

The hack took place in 2016 and involved the hackers obtaining access to the EDGAR SEC corporate reporting network. The network is used by companies to make regulatory filings and contains information ranging from statements on mergers and acquisitions, quarterly earnings and other information that was not publicly known at the time it was filed.

Using that information, the hackers then made multiple stock trades that netted an estimated profit of $4.1 million.

Of the nine charged, two Ukrainian nationals, Artem Radchenko, 27, and Oleksandr Ieremenko, 26, have been indicted on 16 criminal charges by the Department of Justice in relation to their role in the hack and illegal trades.

“The defendants charged in the indictment announced today engaged in a sophisticated hacking and insider trading scheme to cheat the securities markets and the investing public,” U.S. Attorney Craig Carpenito said in a statement Tuesday. “They targeted the SEC with a series of sophisticated and relentless cyber-attacks, stealing thousands of confidential EDGAR filings from the Commission’s servers and then trading on the inside information in those filings before it was known to the market, all at the expense of the average investor.”

Not all defendants hailed from the former Soviet bloc. Two of the nine charged, Sungjin Cho and David Kwon, hail from Los Angeles.

“International computer hacking schemes like the one we charged today pose an ever-present risk to organizations that possess valuable information,” Stephanie Avakian, SEC enforcement division co-director, said in a separate statement. “Today’s action shows the SEC’s commitment and ability to unravel these schemes and identify the perpetrators even when they operate from outside our borders.”

It was not disclosed where the Ukrainian nationals are currently located or whether the Justice Department had sought their arrest and extradition from Ukraine. Notably, Ieremenko was one of 32 indicted in 2015 for his role in the hacking of newswire services that, similar to this scheme, involved confidential information prior to release being used for illegal stock trading.

Photo: glass_window/Flickr