Suspended fund rep faces OSC insider trading allegation

By James Langton | November 17, 2020 | Last updated on November 17, 2020
2 min read

A mutual fund rep who was suspended by regulators earlier this year is now being accused of illegal insider trading and tipping.

The Ontario Securities Commission (OSC) will hold a hearing on Dec. 3 into allegations that Trevor Rosborough, a mutual fund rep who was suspended for five years by the OSC in June, violated securities rules by illegally trading on advance knowledge of a cannabis company’s planned expansion.

The allegations have not been proven.

In June, Rosborough reached a settlement with the OSC that resulted in his registration being suspended for five years for “stealth advising” several former clients after he was terminated by his fund dealer in 2017 for using pre-signed forms.

In a settlement with the Mutual Fund Dealers Association of Canada (MFDA) in 2018, Rosborough was fined $10,000 and ordered to pay $2,500 in costs for the pre-signed forms violation.

Now the OSC has also alleged that, in 2017, Rosborough illegally traded on inside information obtained from a friend who worked at publicly traded cannabis issuer, WeedMD Inc., about the company’s planned expansion.

The OSC alleged that Rosborough, the WeedMD employee, Taylor Carr, and another fund rep, Dimitri Graham, all bought WeedMD shares ahead of the public announcement of the corporate expansion, and that they immediately sold their shares “for a modest profit.”

“These profitable trades were a result of insider trading and tipping, and therefore significant breaches of Ontario securities law,” the commission said in its statement of allegations.

The regulator also alleged that Rosborough tipped a couple of people to the alleged inside information “to impress his existing clients and to grow his business.”

Both Rosborough and Carr are accused of tipping. Graham is also accused of misleading OSC investigators.

James Langton headshot

James Langton

James is a senior reporter for Advisor.ca and its sister publication, Investment Executive. He has been reporting on regulation, securities law, industry news and more since 1994.