Ex-JPMorgan analyst charged with insider trading

Prosecutors arrested a former JPMorgan Chase analyst and two friends in California Tuesday on charges they made more than $600,000 on insider trading deals, the Justice Department.

Ashish Aggarwal, who worked as an investment banking analyst for the US bank in San Francisco from 2011 to 2013, gave tips on a pair of impending technology industry acquisitions to the friends who then traded on them, an indictment said.

Aggarwal disclosed to a college friend, Shahriyar Bolandian, details of acquisitions by Integrated Device Technology of PLX Technology and Salesforce.com's purchase of ExactTarget. Bolandian shared the information with another friend, Kevan Sadigh, and both men traded securities and options related to the companies ahead of the deals.

To cover up that the stock purchases were based on inside information, the three men sent emails to each other "that contained false statements suggesting that their trades were based on research, or luck, not Inside Information," the indictment said.

Aggarwal, 27, and Bolandian, 28, were college friends, while Sadigh, 28, co-owned a Los Angeles clothing company at which Bolandian worked.

The Department of Justice said the profits were used to cover previous trading losses and repay debts owed by Aggarwal and Bolandian.

The SEC, which worked on a parallel case against the three defendants, said they "misused an investment bank's confidential information for their personal benefit and victimized the bank, its clients, and investors," according to Robert Cohen, acting co-chief of enforcement in the SEC's market abuse unit.