Bothell man to spend time in prison for insider trading of Amazon stock
Jun 11, 2021, 7:35 AM
Stock information about Amazon is displayed on a monitor inside Nasdaq's 'Client Experience Center' at their office in Times Square, May 2, 2019, in New York City. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
(Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
A Bothell man who is the husband of an Amazon employee is going to spend the next two years and two months in prison for illegal insider trading of Amazon stock.
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It’s part of a plea bargain between the federal government and 37-year-old Viky Bohra.
“He was using information that his wife, who was in the finance department at Amazon, had access to, to make trades in Amazon stock,” explained Emily Langlie with the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Seattle. “And that is specifically prohibited by someone who has that type of insider information.”
Langlie says Bohra made more than $1.4 million off his trades over the course of 11 straight quarters. He and his wife have also paid more than $2 million in fines and penalties.
“The people who were on the other side of those trades, who lost money because someone else had the inside information, those are the victims of this type of conduct,” Langlie said.
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A handful of Seattle-area tech company workers have been involved in this kind of thing.
“We take insider trading very seriously,” Langlie noted. “As Judge Robart said when he was imposing this sentence, he believes that white collar crime deserves equal treatment to what we call ‘street crime.'”
Bohra’s wife will not face criminal charges as part of the plea agreement. She no longer works for Amazon.
