Willow Grove man charged with insider trading after making $617,000 on CVS Health deal using information from his domestic partner, feds say

On Feb. 2, 2023, the chief executive of Chicago-based Oak Street Health Inc. e-mailed senior executives that the company would be acquired by CVS Health Corp.

One of the Oak Street executives briefed on the confidential information shared it with her longtime domestic partner, Carlos Sacanell, 58, who lived with her in Swarthmore, according to federal authorities.

The next day, Sacanell allegedly made a series of trades to buy $500,000 worth of the company’s securities, including call option contracts, which give investors the right to buy a security at a specified price within a specific time period. Days later, after the publicly traded companies announced their $10.6 billion deal and Oak Street’s stock soared, Sacanell sold his option contracts and netted hundreds of thousands of dollars in profits.

Federal prosecutors and securities regulators in Philadelphia made those allegations in court filings unsealed Thursday as they announced criminal and civil insider trading charges against Sacanell, a senior scientist for a manufacturer of health-care products.

Authorities accused Sacanell, who now lives in Willow Grove, of abusing his partner’s trust and using material nonpublic information to pocket a total of $617,000 in illegal profits.

Then, when confronted by FBI agents about his trades, Sacanell falsely said he didn’t obtain information from his domestic partner, prosecutors say. Prosecutors cited text messages in the indictment that they say show he communicated with his partner about nonpublic information. In addition to insider trading, he was charged with making a false statement to a federal agency.

If convicted, Sacanell faces a maximum sentence of 25 years in prison, according to the office of U.S. Attorney Jacqueline Romero.

Sacanell couldn’t immediately be reached for comment. His attorney, Zak Goldstein, said he was “disappointed that the government indicted Mr. Sacanell as there was an enormous amount of public information regarding the transaction.”

“Indictments are not evidence, he is presumed innocent, and we look forward to resolving the matter in court,” Goldstein said in an email.

Authorities did not identify Sacanell’s partner by name — she’s referred to in court documents as a “senior executive” at Oak Street — and did not accuse her of wrongdoing.

“The senior executive shared this material nonpublic information with Sacanell because the senior executive believed — based on prior conversations with Sacanell and the senior executive’s history of sharing confidences with Sacanell — that he would keep the information confidential and would not breach the senior executive’s trust by using it to trade securities,” according to the complaint filed by the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The alleged insider trading scheme started in January 2023, authorities say, when Sacanell’s partner learned that CVS was planning to acquire her employer that month.

Sacanell started buying Oak Street securities two days after his partner told him in confidence about the potential deal, authorities say. “In the prior two years, Sacanell had rarely traded options and had not traded any Oak Street securities,” the SEC complaint says.

At the time of his trades, he owned more Oak Street call options than any other retail investor, authorities said.

But the charging documents also pointed to a potential defense: News organizations reported on a possible CVS acquisition of Oak Street during the time period in question, indicating another possible way in which Sacanell could have obtained information relevant to his trades.