Lendingtree Inc

The Securities and Exchange Commission said Thursday that it fined a former LendingTree Inc. executive $219,000 for allegedly providing tips used in insider trading of the company's stock before a 2003 takeover by Barry Diller's USA Interactive. David N. Anderson, once a senior vice president of the Internet-based home-loan information service, tipped off three co-workers and a friend to the takeover, the SEC said.

A top executive of financial services company LendingTree Inc. has been indicted on federal charges stemming from insider trading tied to the purchase of the company by USA Interactive in 2003.

A former vice president of LendingTree Inc., an Internet-based loan matchmaker, pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice for lying to the Securities and Exchange Commission, according to the U.

When Anthony Hsieh isn't running his Irvine-based online mortgage company, he regularly skippers a 60-foot yacht, plying the seas in search of quarter-ton marlin and other outsize billfish.

Online mortgage finder LendingTree has agreed to buy Internet-based direct mortgage lender HomeLoanCenter.com of Irvine. Terms weren't disclosed. The transaction, which is expected to close by year's end, would expand LendingTree's operations beyond its core business of matching consumers with lenders into direct lending.

Barry Diller's USA Interactive, expanding the range of goods and services it sells on the Internet, agreed to purchase LendingTree Inc. for $734 million in stock.