For several years, Ernesto Tapanes was a simple, ordinary “oceanography survey consultant,” doing contracting work for the treasure-hunting firm Odyssey Marine Exploration Inc. One spring day in 2007, however, his life abruptly changed when he discovered an anomaly off the coast of Gibraltar. Upon further investigation, it turned out to be a sunken ship from the 18th century carrying 17 tons of gold and silver coins – the largest collection of coins ever excavated from a shipwreck, and worth over $500 million.

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.