Federal prosecutors in Manhattan have charged three Chinese citizens with making more than $4 million by trading on information they got by hacking into some of the top merger-advising law firms in New York, the New York Times reported today. The three men targeted at least seven New York law firms to try to obtain information about deals in the works, according to an indictment unsealed yesterday. The men were successful in hacking two firms, stealing emails of partners who work on mergers, prosecutors said. The three then bought shares of target companies, selling them after the deals were announced, prosecutors said. The law firms were not identified in the indictment or in a parallel civil complaint brought by the Securities and Exchange Commission.
