Erik Lie is a finance professor at The University of Iowa Tippie College of Business who helped the Wall Street Journal investigate fraudulent efforts by corporate executives to increase the value of their stock options by gaming the system.

The trick, called stock options backdating, changed the date an option was granted to an earlier date when the stock price was lower. This increased the value of the option significantly, but it also deceived shareholders, bypassed company rules and accounting, and cheated the IRS.

The 2006 investigation led to significant legal reforms and a Pulitzer Prize for the WSJ.

Now, Lie’s worked with Business Insider investigators to expose the latest effort by corporate executives to game the stock options system for their own benefit. This time, they strategically time the announcement of good or bad corporate news to increase the value of their options. They disclose negative news just before granting options to drive the stock price down. They disclose positive information soon afterward to drive it up.

"I assumed these types of games were over," Lie told BI.