The SEC has indicted three former employees of streaming platform Netflix for insider trading. Together with two other suspects, they would have made $3 million in profit.
Between 2016 and 2019, according to the SEC, the three engineers passed on undisclosed Netflix subscriber figures – an important gauge for investors of the company’s performance – to a brother and a friend of one of their own. Then, they used the information to trade in shares of the streaming platform with insider information.
The engineer “at the centre of the long-term plan” is also accused of having acted on the information of his two former colleagues after he departed from Netflix in 2017. All in all, those involved in the insider trading netted about $3 million, the SEC said.
The regulator found them based on data analysis that indicated ‘unlikely successful trading over a longer period of time’. The SEC is now suing the five in a federal court in Seattle, Washington, for fraud, for which they risk administrative fines. In addition, the public prosecutor in Washington has also launched a criminal investigation.
