WASHINGTON — Professional golfer Phil Mickelson has agreed to forfeit nearly $1 million that the Securities and Exchange Commission said was unfairly earned on a tip from an insider trading scheme involving the Dean Foods Co. spinoff of .
Federal prosecutors announced criminal charges Thursday against a gambler named William Walters and the former director of Dean Foods, Thomas Davis.
From 2008 through 2012, the SEC said, Davis passed Walters highly confidential information on Dean Foods, including sneak previews of at least six of the company’s quarterly earnings announcements and advance notice of .
In 2012, the SEC says, . The SEC says Mickelson did so the next day and made a profit of $931,000.
The golfer was not charged criminally in the case. Mickelson’s management group issued a statement Thursday saying that he felt “vindicated” that the SEC hadn’t charged him with violating securities law.
