A former Amazon financial analyst had pleaded guilty to tipping off a friend to the company's quarterly earnings ahead of their release. The friend made $116,000 on a stock deal based on the information.
A former Amazon financial analyst will spend six months in prison and pay a $2,500 fine after pleading guilty to tipping off a friend on the company’s upcoming financial results and profiting from insider trading.
In addition to the prison term, Brett Kennedy, of Blaine, will spend two years under supervised release. The 27-year-old was sentenced in U.S. District Court in Seattle on Friday. He pleaded guilty in September.
Prosecutors said Kennedy, who joined Amazon in 2013, viewed the results of Amazon’s first-quarter earnings in April 2015, and tipped off a friend who purchased $1.7 million in Amazon stock. The friend, Maziar Rezakhani, Kennedy’s former fraternity brother at the University of Washington, sold the stock for a gain of $116,000 after the public release of the earnings report pushed shares higher. He paid Kennedy $10,000 in cash for the tip.
Rezakhani is serving a five-year prison term for a separate scheme. He pleaded guilty in July 2016 to mail fraud, bank fraud, and filing a false income tax return.