The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission today charged an employee of Morgan Stanley & Co., Inc., and her husband, a former employee of ING Investment Management Services, LLC, with insider trading.

In an emergency civil action filed in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, the Commission charged Jennifer Xujia Wang, an employee of Morgan Stanley, and Ruben Chen, formerly with ING Investment Management, with using online brokerage accounts in Wang’s mother’s name, Zhiling Feng, to purchase securities of three companies on the verge of announcing they would be acquired. Wang and Chen used material non-public information from Wang’s employer, Morgan Stanley, which was contacted to provide services in connection with the acquisitions, the SEC alleges.

These allegations have not been proven. But, acting on the commission’s request, the court issued a temporary restraining order which, among other things, freezes the defendants’ assets and orders repatriation of funds taken out of the United States.

“Today’s action continues our crackdown on illegal insider trading. The commission simply will not allow industry professionals to illegally profit from their access to nonpublic information,” said Linda Chatman Thomsen, director of the commission’s Division of Enforcement.

The commission’s complaint alleges that Wang and Chen obtained illegal profits of more than $600,000 by trading on the basis of material nonpublic information before the public announcements of three acquisitions: Morgan Stanley Real Estate’s Dec. 19, 2005 announcement of its acquisition of Town & Country Trust; MSRE’s Aug. 21, 2006 announcement of its acquisition of Glenborough Realty Trust; and Formation Capital, LLC and JER Partners’ Jan. 16, 2007 announcement of its agreement to acquire Genesis HealthCare Corporation.

The complaint claims that Wang was privy to material nonpublic information concerning each of these pending acquisitions. Since Aug. 29, 2005, she has been employed as a vice president of Morgan Stanley in a group that supported the Principal Transaction Group, which provides financing for MSRE and other entities’ potential acquisitions, the SEC said. The SEC also alleges that Chen and Wang funded and exercised control over Feng’s online brokerage accounts.

The SEC is seeking permanent injunctions against future violations, disgorgement of all ill-gotten gains, prejudgment interest, and civil penalties.