The United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has charged billionaire web entrepreneur (and Dallas Mavericks owner) Mark Cuban with insider trading.

Mark Cuban, who co-founded Broadcast.com, a leading provider of multimedia and streaming on the Internet which was later sold to Yahoo, is accused of using inside information back in June 2004 to dump his 6.3 percent stake in meta search engine Mamma.com. Cuban sold his stock just hours before the company announced a round of fund raising that caused the value of stock in the company to plummet.

Evidently, the CEO of Mamma.com called Mr Cuban on June 28, 2004 to let him know about the capital raising. Cuban was, according to the SEC, unhappy with the plan and subsequently sold his stock before the new fund raising was announced to the public. The SEC alleges that by selling when he did, Mark Cuban avoided losses in excess of $750,000.

For his part, Mark Cuban says the SEC’s case has no merit and is “a product of gross abuse of prosecutorial discretion.” He plans to contest the allegations and demonstrate that the SEC’s claims are “infected by the misconduct of the staff of its Enforcement Division.”

Said Mr Cuban in response to the charges:

“I am disappointed that the Commission chose to bring this case based upon its Enforcement staff’s win-at-any-cost ambitions. The staff’s process was result-oriented, facts be damned. The government’s claims are false and they will be proven to be so.”

Sources: Marshall Kirkpatrick, “Mark Cuban Charged With Insider Trading of Search Engine Mamma.com”, ReadWriteWeb, November 17, 2008, Mark Cuban, “The SEC”, Blog Maverick, November 17, 2008

In the wake of the credit crunch gripping the world, peer-to-peer lending startups are displaying signs of trouble.

Developed to broker lending between regular people like you and I, such companies as Prosper, Lending Club, Zopa and Loanio were on track to broker around $150 million in loans in 2008, 50 percent more than in 2007. But while some considered peer-to-peer lending to prosper in the current economic climate, it appears this nascent industry is not immune from the financial crisis after all.

According to The New York Times, Prosper, the largest peer-to-peer lending site in the U.S., recently stopped allowing lenders to make new loans. Apparently it’s waiting for the Securities and Exchange Commission to evaluate its regulatory filings. This follows a decline in monthly loan volumes that began in the first quarter.

Since Prosper has never been profitable – it’s lifeline being $40 million in venture capital - its future remains uncertain. Meanwhile, another peer-to-peer lender, Zopa, shut down its U.S. website due to “extremely difficult consumer credit circumstances.” It’s still operating in Britain, Italy and Japan.

Source: Brad Stone, “Lending Alternative Hits Hurdle”, The New York Times, October 15, 2008