$12.7 million in avoided losses sits at the center of a civil enforcement action the Securities and Exchange Commission has now closed. The agency dropped its insider-trading lawsuit against executive Peizer after he received a presidential pardon from President Trump. A criminal conviction and a three-and-a-half-year prison sentence, handed down in 2025, had already resolved the parallel criminal proceeding.
What the SEC alleged
The commission's case turned on a single claim: Peizer sold shares in his company after learning that a major client intended to terminate its relationship with the firm. The timing of the sale, the SEC argued, was the offense. By moving out of the stock before the client's departure became public, the agency contended, Peizer avoided $12.7 million in losses that other shareholders absorbed when the news hit.
The measure is a loss-avoidance figure, not a profit. That framing is standard in insider-trading enforcement: regulators calculate what a defendant would have lost had he held through the disclosure, then treat the gap as the harm to the market.
Criminal conviction and the pardon
Peizer's criminal trial ended in a guilty verdict. The sentencing came in 2025: three and a half years. A pardon from President Trump followed.
Presidential pardons reach federal criminal liability. Civil enforcement actions brought by independent regulators sit on a separate legal track, and the commission's decision to dismiss its own suit after the pardon was a choice, not a legal obligation. The commission can pursue civil remedies, including disgorgement and officer-director bars, independently of criminal outcomes. Here, it chose not to.
What the dismissal closes
With the civil case dropped, the $12.7 million in alleged avoided losses will not produce a disgorgement order in this docket. Peizer retains the pardon. The three-and-a-half-year criminal sentence, recorded in 2025 before the pardon arrived, is the last judicial number this matter carries.