CFTC Charges Houston Energy Exec for Insider Trading and Financial Kickbacks

Federal prosecutors in Houston and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission have charged former Pacific Summit Energy President Matthew Clark with operating an illegal scheme involving insider trading of natural gas futures and financial kickbacks.

A federal grand jury in the Southern District of Texas indicted Clark on Thursday on multiple counts of wire fraud, insider trading and making illegal commodities transactions. If convicted, he faces up to 130 years in federal prison.

At the same time, federal commodities regulators filed a lawsuit Thursday in Houston charging Clark with revealing his company's confidential information on natural gas futures orders to an energy broker in exchange for a share of the brokerage commissions.

The 36-page CFTC complaint filed in the U.S. District Court in Houston states that Clark "engaged in a fraudulent scheme to misappropriate material, nonpublic information from his employer, where Clark initiated a tipping chain that enabled others to trade on the basis of this material, nonpublic information, and to enter into fictitious trades at non-bona fide prices."

While the CFTC lawsuit does not identify Clark's employer, his LinkedIn page states that he worked at Pacific Summit Energy for more than nine years, including his 2017 to 2019 as president. He is 54 and lives in Spring, Texas.

Court documents show that Dan Cogdell, partner in the Houston office of the Jones Walker law firm, is representing Clark in both matters. Neither Cogdell nor Clark responded to requests for comment.

The CFTC claims that Clark, who was a long-time energy trader with Dominion Resources, Credit Suisse and American Electric Power, improperly disclosed his company's block trades in natural gas futures to a Houston energy broker named Matthew Webb with Classic Energy.

Source: Houston Chronicle