The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission charged two former Wall Street investment bankers with fraud on Friday over their stock trades in South Jersey Industries, a natural gas utility holding company serving southern New Jersey, ahead of the company's February 24, 2022 takeover announcement.

According to the complaint, filed as case 1:26-cv-07132 in the Southern District of New York, Mr. Satsky, aged 59, was one of the heads of an energy and utility banking unit at the New York bank while working on South Jersey's business and serving as a lead banker on that deal. Mr. Wolfe, his 55-year-old friend and former colleague, was alleged to have traded about 2.2 million shares, making a profit of $18.5 million when the stock rose about 40% on the news.

Wolfe bought 2.2 million shares between November and December

The purchases ran through the last two months of 2021 at a cost of at least $53 million. Infrastructure Investments Fund, a large institutional infrastructure investor, had agreed to take South Jersey private at $36 a share in a deal valued at $8.1 billion.

The SEC says the two men spoke about a possible acquisition on several occasions, including at a nationally televised college basketball game they attended with their wives.

Wolfe traded through eight entities the agency has named as relief defendants — parties not themselves accused of wrongdoing but alleged to hold proceeds the SEC wants recovered — among them Evergreen Capital, Evergreen Financial, Empire Property Management and GAW Holdings. Evergreen manages Wolfe family assets. He and Satsky both left Credit Suisse for Bank of America in 2012.

A regulatory inquiry triggered BofA's internal investigation

The complaint alleges that the two individuals attempted to hide their actions, and it explains how the issue came to light. After the announcement, a financial regulator prompted the bank to run an internal inquiry into trading in South Jersey shares. Bank of America terminated Satsky in March 2025.

The U.S. Attorney's office in Manhattan has been investigating the very same transaction since at least the spring of last year, and no criminal charges have been filed so far.

Satsky's lawyer, Robert Anello, said his client "strongly denies the SEC's allegations" and gave Wolfe no material nonpublic information about the company. Reed Brodsky, Wolfe's attorney, said his client emphatically denies the accusations and contends that the SEC ignored the testimony and evidence that showed Wolfe purchased the stock based on his "own independent investment thesis." The SEC's complaint is a civil filing, and its allegations have yet to be tested in court.

The case fits Atkins' renewed focus on insider trading

The case is one that the SEC, under Paul Atkins, has said it will continue to bring while retreating on other issues. As Cryptopolitan reported this month, the agency's back-to-basics approach targets insider trading, market manipulation, fiduciary breaches and accounting fraud, and it recently built a Financial Reporting and Accounting Unit inside the Enforcement Division.

According to Cornerstone Research, enforcement actions were reduced by about 60 percent after the arrival of Atkins into power in April 2025, with financial penalties for crypto enforcement reduced to $142 million in 2025, less than 3 percent of the previous year's total.

The charges against Satsky and Wolfe fall under Section 10(b) of the Exchange Act and Rule 10b-5, the federal antifraud provisions that prohibit trading on the basis of material nonpublic information. The SEC seeks permanent injunctions, civil penalties and officer-and-director bars — which would bar the two from serving as officers or directors of public companies — against both, disgorgement and prejudgment interest from Wolfe, and a conduct-based injunction against Satsky.