Washington: A 27-year-old Indian-American, previously working with J P Morgan Securities, has been charged along with two of his friends in an insider trading scheme that netted more than $600,000 (around Rs 4 crore) in illicit profits.
Ashish Aggarwal of San Francisco and two of his friends have surrendered before the FBI after they were charged.
In an indictment unsealed on Tuesday, Ashish Aggarwal of San Francisco, Shahriyar Bolandian, 26, of Los Angeles and Kevan Sadigh, 28, of Los Angeles, have been charged with one count of conspiracy to commit securities and tender offer fraud, 13 substantive counts of securities fraud, 13 substantive counts of tender offer fraud and three substantive counts of wire fraud.
Bolandian is also charged with one count of money laundering.
Between June 2011 and June 2013, Aggarwal was employed by JP Morgan Securities, LLC (JPMS) as an investment banking analyst in its San Francisco office.
According to the indictment, through his employment, Aggarwal allegedly obtained material, non-public information about upcoming mergers and acquisitions involving publicly-traded companies.
The indictment alleges that Aggarwal disclosed this information to his friend Bolandian who, in turn, shared the information with Sadigh, who is also a friend of Bolandian. Bolandian and Sadigh then allegedly used the inside information to trade in advance of the public announcements of Integrated Device Technology Inc's April 2012 planned acquisition of PLX Technology Inc and Salesforce.com Inc's June 2013 acquisition of ExactTarget Inc.
According to the indictment, through this scheme, Aggarwal, Bolandian and Sadigh netted more than $600,000 in illicit profits, which the defendants allegedly used to, among other things, cover previous trading losses and to repay liabilities incurred by Aggarwal and Bolandian.
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