Freepoint’s Insider Trading Allegations Raise New Questions for Compliance

Andrew Martin spent 10 years as a top oil analyst at Freepoint Commodities. His models helped drive hundreds of millions in profits. But in a recent lawsuit, he alleges his career was derailed by something more troubling than market volatility: internal pressure to cross legal and ethical lines.

According to the complaint, filed in New York State Supreme Court in July, Martin was urged to source proprietary data without proper authorization and to extract confidential information from industry contacts. Requests for non-public information don’t always arrive as formal directives, but often through casual comments or private conversations. When he resisted, the retaliation came quietly, he alleges: He was cut out of meetings, reassigned without explanation, and ultimately fired just before a scheduled FBI compliance visit to Freepoint’s New York headquarters. 

The company had been under a deferred prosecution agreement tied to unrelated bribery charges. Martin’s firing, he claims, was meant to silence internal whistleblowing: specifically, multiple concerns he raised with Freepoint’s human resources department. 

If true, that could constitute a violation of federal law. Under statutes like the Sarbanes-Oxley Act and Dodd-Frank, employees who report suspected securities violations — including insider trading — are protected from retaliation. Terminating an employee for raising such concerns, even internally, may be grounds for a legal claim.

While it’s not clear whether the pressure was communicated verbally or in writing, the story points to a broader truth: ethical risk often emerges through informal channels and day-to-day behavior, not just formal policy violations.

Culture Isn’t Just What’s Written

The lawsuit doesn't cite emails or digital communications as evidence. But the underlying dynamics — such as requests that blur legal boundaries, subtle forms of retaliation, or unclear lines of authority — are the kinds of challenges compliance teams face, regardless of the medium. Often, the gap isn’t in policy. It’s in the culture: how pressure is applied and pushback is handled.

Executives play a central role in setting behavioral norms. When offhand comments from leadership encourage shortcuts or downplay risk, they can undermine formal policies before the team even knows there’s a problem. 

For organizations focused on preventing regulatory fallout, that means paying attention to tone, not just transactions.

The Role of Language in Compliance

Even when serious issues begin with verbal conversations, they often show up later in written form, like performance feedback, managerial responses, or follow-up emails. 

HarmCheck helps by flagging harmful, unlawful, and unethical language. When retaliation, harassment, discrimination and more surface in written communication, HarmCheck provides an early warning — and a record that supports timely review and action.

A Broader Takeaway

At the heart of the case is a question compliance teams can’t ignore: How do cultural dynamics escape formal oversight? Informal pressure, blurred roles, and slow-burning retaliation are rarely documented, or documented neatly. The lawsuit frames Martin’s firing as retaliation for raising internal concerns, but the steps leading up to that decision unfolded through subtle behavioral shifts that don’t show up in official files. Yet the language around them can offer early clues. 

HarmCheck offers a method for monitoring how people communicate — and whether that communication reflects the culture a company claims to uphold.

Book a free demo with HarmCheck today: http://harmcheck.ai/demo

By Alphy Staff

HarmCheck by Alphy is an AI communication compliance solution that detects and flags language that is harmful, unlawful, and unethical in digital communication. Alphy was founded to reduce the risk of litigation from harmful and discriminatory communication while helping employees communicate more effectively. For more information: www.harmcheck.ai.