The former chief financial officer of software vendor Comverse Technology has pleaded guilty to two felonies in an ongoing U.S. government probe into stock-options backdating.David Kreinberg pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit securities, mail and wire fraud, and one count of securities fraud, the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) announced Tuesday. The charges stem from efforts at Comverse, dating back to 1998, to backdate stock options to dates when the stock was trading at historic lows, allowing executives at the company to collect millions of dollars, the DoJ said.In charges made public in August, Kreinberg and two other former Comverse executives were also accused of operating a secret stock options slush fund.The conspiracy charge against Kreinberg carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000. The securities fraud charge carries a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison and a fine of up to $1 million. The charges also require restitution in an amount to be determined by the court at sentencing, currently estimated at $51 million, the DoJ said. Kreinberg was charged in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York.Separately, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) settled its civil charges against Kreinberg under an agreement that requires him to pay $2.3 million in fines and bars him from practicing as an accountant before the agency. Last month, law-enforcement officials in Namibia arrested Jacob “Kobi” Alexander, Comverse’s former chief executive officer, after a six-week manhunt for him.The DoJ and SEC have begun investigating several tech companies for stock options backdating in recent months. In July, two former executives with storage networking vendor Brocade Communications Systems were charged with securities fraud.By Grant Gross, IDG News Service (Washington Bureau)Keep checking in at our Security Feed for updated news coverage. Related content news Google Chrome zero-day jumps onto CISA's known vulnerability list A serious security flaw in Google Chrome, which was discovered under active exploitation in the wild, is a new addition to the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency’s Known Exploited vulnerabilities catalog. By Jon Gold Oct 03, 2023 3 mins Zero-day vulnerability brandpost The advantages and risks of large language models in the cloud Understanding the pros and cons of LLMs in the cloud is a step closer to optimized efficiency—but be mindful of security concerns along the way. By Daniel Prizmant, Senior Principal Researcher at Palo Alto Networks Oct 03, 2023 5 mins Cloud Security news Arm patches bugs in Mali GPUs that affect Android phones and Chromebooks The vulnerability with active exploitations allows local non-privileged users to access freed-up memory for staging new attacks. By Shweta Sharma Oct 03, 2023 3 mins Android Security Vulnerabilities news UK businesses face tightening cybersecurity budgets as incidents spike More than a quarter of UK organisations think their cybersecurity budget is inadequate to protect them from growing threats. By Michael Hill Oct 03, 2023 3 mins CSO and CISO Risk Management Podcasts Videos Resources Events SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER From our editors straight to your inbox Get started by entering your email address below. Please enter a valid email address Subscribe