Indian IT professional, friends charged with insider trading in US

An Indian IT professional and his four friends have been charged by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) with insider trading for repeatedly trading on confidential earnings information about a Silicon Valley cloud-computing company, reaping millions of dollars in trading profits.

Janardhan Nellore, 42 a former IT administrator at the technology company in Silicon Valley, was at the center of the trading ring, using his IT credentials and work contacts to obtain highly confidential information about his employer's quarterly earnings and financial performance, the Commission said in a statement.

As alleged in the complaint, until he was terminated earlier this year, Nellore traded in his company's securities based on the confidential information or tipped his friends, Sivannarayana Barama, 45, Ganapathi Kunadharaju, 41, Saber Hussain, 42, and Prasad Malempati, 50, who also traded.

The SEC's complaint alleges that the defendants sought to evade detection, with Nellore insisting that the ring use the code word "baby" in texts and emails to refer to his employer's stock, and advising they "exit baby," or "enter few baby."