SEC Charges Family Friend of Former Investment Banker With Insider Trading

The Securities and Exchange Commission today charged an IT professional in Texas who allegedly participated in an insider trading scheme perpetrated by a former Wall Street investment banking analyst. The SEC’s complaint alleges that Hamed Ettu, a family friend of the analyst Damilare Sonoiki, received illegal tips about nonpublic impending mergers as the two communicated in text messages using a Nigerian dialect to carry out their illicit trading. The SEC previously charged Sonoiki and a professional football player, Mychal Kendricks, in the scheme. Using allegedly misappropriated information, Ettu and Sonoiki made approximately $93,000 in illegal profits by using Ettu’s brokerage account to purchase the call options of companies that were about to be acquired and then selling these positions after the deals were announced.