Odyssey Marine Exploration immediately passed out confidentiality agreements to its employees containing two simple stipulations: 1) Don’t tell anyone about the shipwreck, code named “Black Swan,” and 2) Don’t trade company stock until the discovery was announced. Well, Tapanes had his own idea: mutiny and take some of the profits for himself.

This story started out with a lot of promise, but what could have been a great tale of daring-do and high sea escapades ended up being really lame. He didn’t bury a large amount of the treasure to be found later, he didn’t try sneaking it out of the boat. Instead, he courageously logged into his E*Trade account and unloaded $150,000 of his savings to buy 42,000 shares of the company. That was just before Odyssey Marine Exploration, the otherwise obscure company, announced the find and enjoyed watching its stock value jump by 80%.

Blatant insider trading is a very easy criminal activity to discover. A computer program immediately flags any unusual stock movement and alerts the authorities. The SEC very quickly found out that Tapanes worked for the company and began an investigation. Tapanes settled the issue outside of court and agreed to pay a fine of just over $215,000. He could still possibly face lawsuits from other federal agencies, according to one report on the story, but no other charges have been brought.

The money will be returned to United Health shareholders, who have so far recovered $900 million from former and current executives related to illegal backdating. The deal will have to be approved by a federal and a state judge before it’s completely finalized.

“I am very pleased to have reached a resolution that puts these matters to rest,” McGuire said in an official statement.

But, things aren’t quite over. The California Public Employees’ Retirement System is spearheading a shareholder lawsuit requesting that he lose access to his remaining 24 million shares, estimated to be worth about $800 million. The result of that case is expected sometime this week.

Mr. Reyes had been accused of intentionally changing the grant dates for hundreds of stock option awards without disclosing the move to investors. Sentencing is scheduled for Nov. 21st and Reyes could face up to 20 years in prison and millions of dollars in fines.

The conviction is expected to embolden prosecutors to pursue similar cases.

Back in May, Brocade agreed to pay $7 million to settle civil fraud charges in connection with backdating. Reyes’ alleged accomplice and Brocade’s former head of HR, Stephanie Jensen, is still awaiting trial.

Commentary:The conviction was not surprising to us. You can read the original SEC compliant here. A review of the document will show that the SEC had a very strong case and that Mr. Reyes was pretty much a one-man compensation committee. Now the only question left is how much prison time he will get (unlike Take-Two’s CEO, who got off with probation, we are predicting actual prison time in this case). We are sure that prosecutors are reinvigorated.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commision filed a civil complaint against Brian Hunter, the former chief energy trader of the company, as well as Amaranth. Hunter earned over $100 million in 2005.

Read the full story.

Commentary: There is no planned jail time if Hunter is convicted. A monetary punishment may not be sufficient for him after his reported earnings of over $100 million.