By John Oates, 16 April 1999 17:51
NEWS A man has been charged with securities fraud after he allegedly faked a Bloomberg news page predicting that the company he worked for - PairGain Technologies - was about to be taken over. The company shares rose 30 per cent to $11.13 on 7 April after the fake page was posted with a link to an investment bulletin board. The page claimed that Pairgain was to be taken over by Israeli company ECI Telecom. The 25-year old man, Gary Dale Hoke, an employee of PairGain, could face a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison and a $1m fine. Ian Lowe, ICT partner at lawyers Berwin Leighton, said: "This underlines the danger to those with intellectual property on the Internet and the ease with which it can be copied. It is also interesting that he was caught relatively quickly. People sit at a PC and think they are anonymous - they're not."
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