Professional golfer Phil Mickelson has agreed to forfeit nearly $US1 million ($A1.4 million) that the US Securities and Exchange Commission said was unfairly earned on a tip from an insider trading scheme conducted by a former corporate director and a professional gambler.
The SEC announced criminal charges on Thursday against a gambler named William Walters and the former director of Dean Foods, Thomas Davis, alleging that the pair used inside information about the company to make millions of dollars in illicit stock trades between 2008 and 2012.
In 2012, the SEC says, Walters called Mickelson, who owed him money, and urged him to trade Dean Foods stock.
The SEC says Mickelson did so the next day and made a profit of $US931,000.
"Simply put, Mickelson made money that wasn't his to make," Andrew Ceresney, head of the SEC's Enforcement Division, said at a Manhattan news conference.
The golfer was not charged criminally in the case.
Mickelson's management group issued a statement on Thursday saying that he felt "vindicated" that the SEC hadn't been charged with violating securities law.
"At the same time, however, Phil has no desire to benefit from any transaction that the SEC sees as questionable," it said.
Accordingly, he has entered into an agreement with the SEC under which he will return all the money he made on that 2012 investment," it said.
Davis has already pleaded guilty in the case and is co-operating with the investigation, the US Attorney in Manhattan, Preet Bharara, said.
