The S.E.C. has been down this road before, and that case did not turn out well. Mark Cuban, the owner of the Dallas Mavericks, was accused of insider trading in 2008 in shares of a small internet company in which he owned a substantial stake. The S.E.C. said he received negative information from a corporate executive and promised to keep it confidential but then sold out his position in the company before the announcement.

The S.E.C.’s case was hamstrung by the refusal of the corporate executive to travel to the United States to testify in person, leaving the agency with little evidence to show an agreement, which Mr. Cuban denied making when he testified. A jury found that he did not violate the securities laws, and ever since, he has been a thorn in the side of the S.E.C., posting on Twitter that the case against Mr. Cooperman is a “witch hunt.”

To avoid similar problems, the S.E.C. does its best in the complaint to show that Mr. Cooperman is untrustworthy, and therefore any denials he might offer about agreeing to keep the information confidential would not be credible.

The S.E.C. claims that he improperly sought to influence the Atlas executive who provided him with the information to deny having shared it after Omega Advisors received a subpoena as part of the insider trading investigation. Although it could not charge him with obstructing justice, because only the Justice Department can pursue a criminal case, the agency certainly wants a jury to infer guilty knowledge from an attempt to cover up receiving confidential information.

Right before he started buying, the complaint says, Mr. Cooperman told a consultant to Omega Advisors that the investment in the company was not a good one, using an expletive to describe Atlas. The S.E.C. hopes to show that the information about the asset sale caused a sudden change in sentiment, a harbinger of insider trading.

The S.E.C. goes a step further in trying to put Mr. Cooperman in a bad light by pointing out that he asserted the Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination rather than testify about the Atlas trading. Any time a witness refuses to answer questions, the government’s interest is piqued because that looks like smoke coming from a fire.