Insider Trading: Indian-American convicted of making illicit profits worth $7.3 M

National Briefs US

An Indian-American former IT professional has been convicted of four counts of securities fraud in California for using a publicly traded company’s confidential inside information about its financial performance to trade in the company’s securities. 

Sivannarayana Barama, 48, and a co-defendant were charged with securities fraud and conspiracy to commit securities fraud by a superseding indictment in December 2019. 

The co-defendant pleaded guilty plea to related charges in 2019. 

Barama proceeded to jury trial, and the jury returned its verdicts against him on December 13. 

He had participated in an insider trading scheme in which he learned inside information about the quarterly financial performance of NASDAQ-listed Palo Alto Networks before that information was released to the public and then traded in that company’s stock while that information was still confidential.