The Billionaire Behind Insider Trading Charges

According to the SEC, Mamma.com's CEO called Cuban in 2004 to invite him to participate in the stock offering, after telling him the information was confidential and that he could not trade on it.

The SEC claims Cuban became "very upset and angry" during the phone call, and ended it by saying, "Well, I'm screwed. I can't sell."

Within hours, Cuban allegedly called his broker and told him to sell all his 6 percent ownership stake in the company, the SEC says.

The SEC is seeking a civil court judgment finding that Cuban violated the antifraud provisions of the federal securities laws, an unspecified fine and restitution of the losses Cuban allegedly avoided. Phillip Stern, a former SEC lawyer who now works at Neal, Gerber and Eisenberg in Chicago, said the SEC usually asks for a penalty equal to the amount of avoided losses.

Cuban defended himself in a statement posted on his Web site: "I am disappointed that the Commission chose to bring this case based upon its Enforcement staff's win-at-any-cost ambitions," the statement said. "The staff's process was result-oriented, facts be damned. The government's claims are false and they will be proven to be so."

Now one of the richest men in the country -- Forbes estimated his net worth at $2.6 billion -- Cuban started MicroSolutions, which he sold in 1990 to Compuserve for a reported $3 million.

In an interview earlier this year with the Web site TechCrunch, Cuban said he "retired" after he sold the company, when he was 30. "My goal was to drink with as many people in as many countries as possible. I sold a company and all I wanted was a lifetime pass for American Airlines. They had them for $125,000 for two people. I used to go into bars and ask women if they wanted to go on trips," he said.

Cuban soon started another business, broadcast.com, which put sports games online. He sold the company to Yahoo! in 1999 for $5.7 billion. The next year, he bought the Mavericks.

"Once I didn't have to pay the bills," Cuban told TechCrunch, "the best challenges were to come up with stuff that people said couldn't be done."