Former Netflix engineer and his brother plead guilty to insider trading
Two other Netflix employees have been accused in the scheme
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An ex-Netflix software engineer and his brother both pleaded guilty this week for their roles in what authorities say was a coordinated insider trading ring involving two other former employees of the streaming giant.
Sung Mo Jun, 49, of Bellevue, Wash., and his brother, Joon Jun, 45, of Issaquah, Wash., admitted to securities fraud in federal court on Monday. The brothers are slated to be sentenced in December, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office in the Western District of Washington.
| Ticker | Security | Last | Change | Change % |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| NFLX | NETFLIX INC. | 897.48 | +13.63 | +1.54% |
FORMER AMAZON MANAGER AND FAMILY MEMBERS CHARGED WITH INSIDER TRADING
Sung Jun is accused of being at the center of the purported scheme. Officials say that while he worked at Netflix during 2016 and 2017, he passed along non-public Netflix data to Joon Jun and a close friend, Junwoo Chon. Joon Jun and Chon both made trades based on those numbers and profited from the transactions. Chon even paid Sung Jun $60,000 for the profits according to investigators.
After Sung Jun left Netflix, he asked two other software engineers who still remained at the company, Jae Hyeon Bae and Ayden Lee, to send him insider information since he no longer had access to it according to a separate complaint from the Securities and Exchange Commission. Both Lee and Bae are accused of complying and passing the information along; neither are still at Netflix.
All told, the Jun brothers and Chon raked in a combined $3.1 million from illicit trades made using the material non-public information according to prosecutors.
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Chon already pleaded guilty earlier this month, and Lee's plea hearing has not yet been scheduled. Bae was hit with a civil penalty of $72,875 in the SEC's civil case.
Insider trading carries a punishment of up to 20 years in prison and up to $5 million in fines.