SF investment banker arrested for insider trading
LOS ANGELES - LOS ANGELES (KTVU and wires) -- A San Francisco investment banking analyst and two of his friends have been arrested for acquiring more than $600,000 on the stock market in an insider trading scheme, U.S. Justice Department officials said.
Ashish Aggarwal, 27, of San Francisco is accused in a federal indictment filed in Los Angeles of using his position as an analyst for J.P. Morgan Securities to illegally provide his friends, 26-year-old Shahriyar Bolandian and 28-year-old Kevan Sadigh, with secret information about upcoming mergers and acquisitions.
The three are each charged with one count of conspiracy, 13 counts of securities fraud, 13 counts of tender offer fraud and three counts of wire fraud. Bolandian also is charged with one count of money laundering,
according to federal prosecutors.
Sadigh is a childhood friend of Bolandian and briefly gave him a job in his apparel store, Greek Life Threads, prosecutors said. He was also an acquaintance of Aggarwal.
Between June 2011 and June 2013, Aggarwal fed information about upcoming mergers and acquisitions to Bolandian and Bolandian shared the information with Sadigh.
Using that information, they purchased stocks in advance of Integrated Device Technology's April 2012 planned acquisition of PLX Technology and Salesforce.com's June 2013 acquisition of ExactTarget,
prosecutors said.
Bolandian made $400,000 this way and Sadigh made $200,000. Among other things, Bolandian helped Aggarwal by using the money to pay off $230,000 in debt the two had previously incurred through securities trading.
The three men surrendered to the FBI and were scheduled to appear before U.S. Magistrate Judge Patrick Walsh in Los Angeles.