Former Equifax manager sentenced in insider trading case

(Updates to show change in DoJ statement from "restitution" to "forfeiture"; Adds details, background)

Oct 16 (Reuters) - A former Equifax Inc manager was sentenced to eight months of home confinement over insider trading charges related to last year's data breach at the credit monitoring firm.

Sudhakar Reddy Bonthu, 44, a former software product development manager at Equifax, pleaded guilty in July to charges he bought and sold stock options before the company announced the massive data breach in September 2017.

Bonthu knew by Aug. 30, 2017 that information from about 100 million individuals had been exposed and that the company planned to publicly disclose the breach in early September, the government said in July.

Using the information, Bonthu bought put options in Equifax stock and made a profit of more than $75,000 after the company's shares dropped following the announcement, according to charging documents.

U.S. District Court Judge Amy Totenberg on Tuesday ordered Bonthu to forfeit $75,979 and also pay a $50,000 fine.

"He's relieved to have this ordeal over," said Meg Strickler, a lawyer for Bonthu.

The breach gave hackers access to names, Social Security numbers, birthdates and addresses for millions of people.

(Reporting by Jim Finkle in New York and Uday Sampath in Bengaluru Editing by Tom Brown and Sriraj Kalluvila)