Silicon Valley IT Administrator and Friends Charged in Multimillion Dollar Insider Trading Ring

The Securities and Exchange Commission today announced insider trading charges against five friends who repeatedly traded on confidential earnings information about a Silicon Valley cloud-computing company, reaping millions of dollars in trading profits. According to the SEC’s complaint, Janardhan Nellore, a former IT administrator then at Palo Alto Networks Inc., 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. As alleged in the complaint, until he was terminated earlier this year, Nellore traded Palo Alto Networks securities based on the confidential information or tipped his friends, Sivannarayana Barama, Ganapathi Kunadharaju, Saber Hussain, and Prasad Malempati, who also traded.