A Toronto trader working at a Canadian asset management company has been charged in the U.S. for insider trading and running a multimillion-dollar front-running scheme.
The U.S. Department of Justice claims Sean Wygovsky engaged in securities and wire fraud as part of a scheme where he allegedly stole confidential information about his employer’s trade orders to make hundreds of personal trades in the same stocks.
The department claims in New York court filings that 40-year-old Wygovsky made $3.6 million between January 2015 and April 2021 using five accounts in the names of three of his relatives to hide his identity.
The department outlined a pattern where it alleges those accounts would buy high quantities of stocks and then sell them for a profit later that day when Wygovsky’s employer executed an order to buy, increasing the value of the shares.
Investigators uncovered more than 700 trades that follow this pattern and instances where money was transferred from accounts in the relatives’ names to ones in Wygovsky’s name.
A release from the department does not name Wygovsky’s employer, but a LinkedIn profile lists someone with his name as a senior analyst and trader at Polar Asset Management Partners Inc. during the years the allegations allegedly took place.
The asset manager and a lawyer believed to be representing Wygovsky did not immediately respond to a request for comment.