Wall Street’s regulator has charged three former Netflix software engineers with insider trading.
The ex-employees and two associates are alleged to have made $3 million from confidential Netflix subscriber data. The information was then used to illegally trade shares using information about the streamer’s subscriber growth.
The complaint made by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which alleged Sung Mo Jun, a former software engineer at Netflix was at the centre of the long running scheme, during his period of employment in 2016 and 2017.
Sung Mo Jun passed the information to his brother and a close friend, who then used it to trade in Netflix shares. When he left the company the practice continued through two other Netflix employees who continued to pass him the subscriber info.
“We allege that a Netflix employee and his close associates engaged in a long-running, multimillion dollar scheme to profit from valuable, misappropriated company information,” said Erin Schneider, director of SEC’s regional office in San Francisco.
A fraud case has also been launched against four of the five defendants which could carry a prison sentence.
