WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. government has filed criminal and civil charges against a former Equifax Inc (EFX.N) executive over alleged insider trading linked to last year’s massive data breach at the credit reporting company, officials said on Wednesday. 
  
 Credit reporting company Equifax Inc. corporate offices are pictured in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S., September 8, 2017. REUTERS/Tami Chappell 
  
 Jun Ying, a former Equifax technology executive, faces criminal charges filed by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Georgia and anti-fraud civil charges filed by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. 
  
 Lawyers representing Ying declined comment. 
  
 It is the first time that the U.S. government has pursued insider trading charges against somebody accused of profiting from information about a cyber attack, said David Axelrod, a former SEC trial attorney who is a partner at law firm Ballard Spahr. 
  
 The SEC last month warned companies that executives should not trade on non-public information about breaches. 
  
 That guidance and the charges against Ying will likely prompt publicly-held companies to implement new procedures for dealing with trades by employees following a breach, Axelrod said. 
  
 The SEC’s complaint alleges Ying used confidential information to determine Equifax had suffered a massive data breach. He then exercised all vested Equifax stock options and immediately sold the stock, receiving over $950,000 in proceeds, the SEC said. 
  
 Equifax’s interim chief executive said in a statement that Ying left the company after it reviewed Ying’s trading activity and concluded he had violated its trading policies. 
  
 Atlanta-based Equifax said it reported its findings to the government and is “fully cooperating” with the Department of Justice and the SEC. 
  
 The SEC said it determined Ying avoided more than $117,000 in losses by selling stock before Equifax announced Sept. 7 that the personal information of nearly 150 million Americans had been compromised. The shares slumped as much as 37 percent after disclosure of the hack. 
  
 Equifax had been aware of the breach since July 29, days before some of its senior executives, including its chief financial officer, sold $1.8 million worth of company shares. 
  
 Equifax said the charges against Ying are unrelated to stock sales by other executives, which led to intense scrutiny from lawmakers who pressed the SEC to launch an insider trading investigation. 
  
 In November, Equifax said an internal investigation found that four executives who sold shares before the breach was disclosed were not aware of the incident when they made the trades. 
  
 The SEC said it is seeking disgorgement of ill-gotten gains by Ying as well as interest, penalties and injunctive relief. ||||| A former Equifax executive is accused of unloading almost $1 million of stock options just before the company announced its huge data breach. 
  
 Jun Ying, a former chief information officer at Equifax, was charged Wednesday with insider trading. 
  
 He learned of the breach on Friday, August 25, 2017, the SEC said. That was two weeks before Equifax publicly announced that the personal information of more than 140 million Americans had been compromised. 
  
 At the time Ying learned of the breach, the stock market had already closed, according to an SEC complaint. On the following Monday, he searched online to figure out what happened to the stock of another credit bureau, Experian, after it was breached in 2015, the complaint said. 
  
 An hour later, Ying exercised and sold all his Equifax stock options, worth $950,000, according to the complaint. The SEC says he avoided $117,000 in losses that he would have incurred if had he held on to the stock until after Equifax (EFX) went public with the breach on September 7. 
  
 "Ying used confidential information to conclude that his company had suffered a massive data breach, and he dumped his stock before the news went public," said Richard Best, director of the SEC's Atlanta Regional Office, in a statement. 
  
 Separate criminal charges were also filed against Ying by federal prosecutors in Atlanta. Information on a lawyer for Ying was not immediately available. Federal prosecutors said he would be arraigned later this week. 
  
 Equifax said it reported Ying's trading activity to the government on September 15 and fired him a month later. 
  
 "We take corporate governance and compliance very seriously, and will not tolerate violations of our policies," interim CEO Paulino Do Rego Barros said in a statement. 
  
 The SEC said its investigation is ongoing. 
  
 The agency's statement of facts reads like a crime novel: 
  
 At 4:33 p.m. on August 25, Ying got an email about a mandatory conference call that would take place 12 minutes later. Ying didn't join the call, but he assigned a subordinate to listen, and the two texted each other during the meeting. 
  
 When Ying's subordinate said Ying would have to cancel his evening plans, Ying joined the call. He complained about the work, and his boss told him to call the company's global chief information officer. 
  
 At 5:26 p.m., Ying called the CIO. A minute later, he texted the same subordinate from earlier: "Sounds bad. We may be the the one breached ... Starting to put 2 and 2 together." 
  
 In September, the credit reporting agency disclosed the names of three other Equifax executives who sold shares of the credit bureau worth nearly $2 million shortly after the massive data breach was discovered. 
  
 Equifax Chief Financial Officer John Gamble sold shares worth nearly $950,000 on August 1. Joseph Loughran, Equifax's president for U.S. information solutions, sold shares worth about $685,000 on August 1 as well. And Rodolfo Ploder, president of workforce solutions, sold stock for just more than $250,000 on August 2. 
  
 The company found that none of those executives knew about the breach when they sold their stock. |||||
What is a one-paragraph summary of the above article?
– Before Equifax went public with news of its massive data breach last September, Jun Ying, the company's then-US chief information officer, exercised and sold all his stock options. Now the SEC says the nearly $1 million move was insider trading, and Ying has been charged to that end in federal court. "Ying used confidential information to conclude that his company had suffered a massive data breach, and he dumped his stock before the news went public," per an SEC statement. CNN Money reports that had Ying waited until after the disclosure, he would have lost $117,000. Reuters reports Ying will also face anti-fraud charges filed by the SEC.