SEC Charges App Annie With Securities Fraud in $10 Million Settlement

The Securities and Exchange Commission announced Tuesday that it's charging App Annie, the mobile app data provider, with securities fraud, accusing the company of "engaging in deceptive practices" and misrepresenting the origins of its data. From a report: App Annie will pay a $10 million settlement, according to the announcement, although the company has not admitted to any of the SEC's findings. According to the SEC, the company, which sells estimates on app downloads, usage and revenue, assured app businesses that the performance data they shared with App Annie would only be used in an anonymized way and run through an algorithm to generate performance estimates. But the SEC accuses App Annie and its former CEO and Chairman Bertrand Schmitt of reneging on that promise and using actual performance data to tweak its estimate models between 2014 and 2018. Then, the SEC alleges, the company sold that confidential data to trading firms, and misled those customers into thinking that the data was compliant with federal securities laws.

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