Health Insur­ance CEO Was Being Inves­ti­gat­ed By DOJ When He Was Gunned Down

Bri­an Thomp­son, the 50-year-old CEO of Unit­ed­Health­care who was gunned down in Mid­town Man­hat­tan on Wednes­day, was one of mul­ti­ple exec­u­tives at his com­pa­ny who were being inves­ti­gat­ed by the Depart­ment of Jus­tice for insid­er trad­ing.

Thomp­son was shot and killed in what author­i­ties believe was a “brazen tar­get­ed attack” before he made it to the Hilton hotel to take part in his company’s annu­al Investor’s Con­fer­ence. The New York Post report­ed that Thomp­son and sev­er­al oth­er exec­u­tives at Unit­ed­Health Group are fac­ing a DOJ probe. Unit­ed Health­care is a sub­sidiary of Unit­ed­Health Group, one of the largest com­pa­nies in the world.

On Feb­ru­ary 16 of this year, Thomp­son sold shares worth $15.1 mil­lion just two weeks before the pub­lic found out about a fed­er­al antitrust probe, accord­ing to Crain’s New York Busi­ness. The DOJ was report­ed­ly inves­ti­gat­ing whether Unit­ed­Health Group vio­lat­ed antitrust laws by mak­ing acqui­si­tions that con­sol­i­dat­ed its mar­ket posi­tion. Thompson’s sale of his shares ear­li­er this year was his first since tak­ing over the com­pa­ny in 2021, accord­ing to the Post. Thomp­son, Unit­ed­Health Group Chair­man Stephen Helm­s­ley, Chief Peo­ple Offi­cer Erin McSweeney, and Chief Account­ing Offi­cer Tom Roos sold a com­bined $101.5 mil­lion in shares.

Anoth­er sub­sidiary of Unit­ed­Health Group was also tar­get­ed in a ran­somware attack ear­li­er this year, which result­ed in up to one-third of Amer­i­cans’ data, includ­ing social secu­ri­ty num­bers, poten­tial­ly being com­pro­mised. The com­pa­ny end­ed up pay­ing a $22 mil­lion ran­som to the hack­ers. The ran­somware attack cost the mas­sive com­pa­ny an esti­mat­ed $705 mil­lion when busi­ness dis­rup­tion was fac­tored in, Reuters report­ed.

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Video footage showed Thomp­son being tar­get­ed in an exe­cu­tion-style shoot­ing out­side the Hilton hotel in Mid­town. The sus­pect, who author­i­ties believe is a male, was wear­ing a black hood­ie and black mask and car­ry­ing a gray back­pack. After he fired at Thomp­son, the suspect’s gun appeared to mal­func­tion, but the shoot­er fixed the jam and con­tin­ued fir­ing, show­ing he is like­ly famil­iar with using firearms.

Thompson’s wife told NBC News that her hus­band has faced mul­ti­ple death threats, but added that she did not know the specifics of the threats.

“There had been some threats. Basi­cal­ly, I don’t know, a lack of cov­er­age? I don’t know details. I just know that he said there were some peo­ple that had been threat­en­ing him,” she said.

Police are offer­ing a $10,000 reward for infor­ma­tion on the sus­pect. Author­i­ties believe he fled the scene on foot before get­ting on a city e‑bike and rid­ing into Cen­tral Park.