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geez....I like these catchums stories SEC Charges Former Investment Bank Analyst and Two Others With Insider Trading in Advance of Client Deals FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 2015-174 Washington D.C., Aug. 25, 2015 The Securities and Exchange Commission today charged a former investment bank analyst with illegally tipping his close friend with confidential information about clients involved in impending mergers and acquisitions of technology companies. The SEC also charged his friend and another individual with trading on the inside information. The SEC alleges that Ashish Aggarwal, who worked in J.P. Morgans San Francisco office, gleaned sensitive nonpublic information about two acquisition deals from colleagues who were working on them. Aggarwal tipped Shahriyar Bolandian, who traded on the basis of the illegal tips in his own accounts as well as accounts belonging to his father and sister. Bolandian also tipped his friend Kevan Sadigh so he could trade on the confidential information. Bolandian worked at Sadighs e-commerce company, and together they made more than $672,000 in combined profits from their insider trading. The SEC Enforcement Divisions Market Abuse Unit detected the insider trading through trading data analysis tools in its Analysis and Detection Center. We allege that Aggarwal, Bolandian, and Sadigh misused an investment banks confidential information for their personal benefit and victimized the bank, its clients, and investors, said Robert A. Cohen, Acting Co-Chief of the SEC Enforcement Divisions Market Abuse Unit. We will continue to proactively identify and combat serial insider trading schemes, particularly when it involves industry professionals. In a parallel action, the U.S. Department of Justice today announced criminal charges against Aggarwal, who lives in San Francisco, as well as Bolandian and Sadigh, who each live in Los Angeles. According to the SECs complaint filed in U.S. District Court for the Central District of California: Aggarwal misappropriated confidential information about two J.P. Morgan-advised deals: Integrated Device Technologys planned acquisition of PLX Technology in 2012 and salesforce.coms acquisition of ExactTarget in 2013. Aggarwal repeatedly communicated with Bolandian, his friend since college, in the days and weeks leading up to public announcements about the deals. Bolandian and Sadigh bought the same series of call options in PLX Technology and ExactTarget. Their trades were often within hours or even minutes of each other, and typically were 100 percent of the daily trading volume of those option series. One of the brokerage accounts used by Bolandian was located offshore in the Bahamas. He opened and funded the account with his credit card a week before the ExactTarget deal was announced. Bolandian conducted various trades in his accounts on Aggarwals behalf in an arrangement that enabled Aggarwal to circumvent J.P. Morgans pre-clearance rules and potentially share in any profits.