Indian-Origin Husband Of Ex-Amazon Employee Jailed For Securities Fraud In US
Press Trust of India, 14 June 2021
Washington: The Indian-origin husband of a former Amazon employee has been sentenced to 26 months in prison by a US court for securities fraud and illegally making a profit of USD 1.4 million by using inside trading information from his wife.
Viky Bohra, 37, from Bothell, Washington state, pleaded guilty in November 2020, admitting that between 2016 and 2018, he used Amazon inside information he obtained from his wife, an Amazon finance employee, to place trades in Amazon stock-making a profit of $1.4 million, acting US Attorney Tessa M Gorman said.
Mr Bohra was sentenced on June 10 in US District Court in Seattle to 26 months in prison for securities fraud due to his insider trading activity, the US Department of Justice said in a press release.
At the sentencing hearing, US District Judge James L Robart noted that Bohra had turned his wife and father into criminals and added “I firmly believe white collar crime deserves equal treatment to what we call street crime.”
“This defendant and his wife were earning hundreds of thousands of dollars in salary and bonuses from their jobs in tech — but he was not content with that — greedily scheming to illegally profit by trading Amazon stock,” said US Attorney Tessa M Gorman.
“This case should stand as a warning to those who try to game the markets with insider trading: there is a heavy price to pay with a felony conviction and prison sentence.”
