Former Netflix Engineer And Co-conspirator Sentenced To Prison For Insider Trading

(RTTNews) - A former Netflix software engineer, and his friend and co-conspirator were sentenced Friday in U.S. District Court in Seattle for securities fraud for their roles in an insider trading ring that generated more than $3 million in illegal proceeds, the US Attorney's Office in the Western District of Washington said in a statement.

Sung Mo Jun, 49, was sentenced to 2 years in prison and a $15,000 fine. His friend and co-conspirator Junwoo Chon, 50, was sentenced to 14 months in prison and a $10,000 fine.

"For people in the high tech industry, they will clearly know that there are consequences - including prison time - for this activity," U.S. District Judge Richard Jones said.

According to records filed in the case, from July 2016 to February 2017, Sung Mo Jun was employed by Netflix as a software engineer. At that time, he shared confidential subscriber data with his brother Joon Jun, 45 and his close friend, Junwoo Chon.

After Sung Mo Jun left Netflix, he obtained additional non-public information about subscriber data from another Netflix employee, software engineer Ayden Lee, 33. Jun not only passed that information on to his brother and Chon, he also used it to make his own trades. Between April 2017, and July 2019, Sung Mo Jun made a profit of $434,086 by trading in Netflix stock and options with this inside information.

Between July 2016 and April 2017, Jun's brother, Joon Jun, made $215,419 and co-conspirator Junwon Chon made $521,400. All told, the insider trading attributable to Sun Mo Jun in Netflix securities resulted in an illicit gain of about$1.17 million. Chon is responsible for illicit profits of $1.64 million.

Jun is forfeiting $495,188 to the U.S. and Chon is forfeiting $1,582,885 to the U.S. In addition to the prison sentences, both will be on one year of supervised release following prison and must complete 50 hours of community service.

The other two conspirators, Joon Jun and Ayden Lee, will be sentenced next year.