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The co-defendant in the Securities and Exchange Commission’s insider-trading lawsuit against former Heartland Payment Systems Inc. chief executive Robert O. Carr will pay $528,608 to the SEC under a settlement approved Thursday by a federal judge.
Katherine M. Hanratty, described as Carr’s long-time girlfriend, neither admitted nor denied the SEC’s allegations in a July lawsuit, according to court documents. The SEC alleged Carr informed her of merchant acquirer Global Payments Inc.’s intent to acquire Heartland before that information became public in December 2015. She then allegedly used funds given to her by Carr to acquire Heartland stock before its price rose on the merger news, and later sold shares for a nearly $251,000 profit.
Under terms of the settlement, Hanratty, of Watertown, Conn., is to disgorge, or pay back, $250,628 in profits from the stock sale and pay $27,352 in interest. She also must pay a civil penalty of $250,628.
The agreement was approved by Stefan R. Underhill, chief judge of the federal courts’ District of Connecticut.
Carr, in an email to Digital Transactions News, declined to comment.
The SEC’s lawsuit followed one Heartland, now a Global Payments subsidiary, filed in May against Carr, who called that lawsuit a “smear campaign.” Michael G. McGovern, Carr’s New York City attorney, later said he was talking with the SEC and that he was “confident that this matter will be resolved favorably.”
