23
January
2007
|
00:32 AM
America/Los_Angeles

1.23.07: Job talks to feds, took 7 months to report suspicious options


The Recorder, SF's legal newspaper, first broke the story that the SEC and the Justice Dept. interviewed Steve Jobs, with lawyers in tow, last week. (SF Chronicle

. No word on what they talked about, but the Washington Post reports that Jobs took 7.5 months to report the receipt of 7.5 million options that were improperly backdated.



This is starting to look serious: A falsified backdate, made-up documents to justify the date, fraudulent SEC filings, an exchange of the options for restricted stock, and now seven and half months for Jobs to file?


The timing of Jobs's filing was not illegal and beat the deadline. But it broke with the practice common among other Apple officers and directors of submitting the report, in this case a Form 4, within weeks, not months.

"That's clearly an anomaly worth pursuing," said Michael Levy, a former federal prosecutor who heads the white-collar group at the McKee Nelson law firm in the District. "The fact that it was this grant in particular that was subject to such a delayed filing of Form 4 seems very interesting."