Indiana Couple Charged in an Indictment Filed in D.C. with Securities Fraud for Insider Trading

            WASHINGTON – Fan Yang, 39, and Jing Tian, 37, both of Indianapolis, were arrested and charged in an indictment unsealed today for conspiring to commit securities fraud for allegedly using insider information to profit from a $3.7 billion corporate acquisition, announced U.S. Attorney Jeanine Ferris Pirro.

            Yang, aka “Jocelyn Yang,” and Tian are charged in U.S. District Court in Washington D.C. with two counts of conspiracy to commit securities fraud.

            Yang was a finance executive at an Indiana manufacturing company for which her husband, Tian, also worked.

            According to the charging document, in 2021, their company began to hold internal discussions about acquiring a Michigan-based firm that made automobile components. On Feb. 22, 2022, their company announced an agreement to acquire the targeted firm at a price of $36.50 per share, for a total value of $3.7 billion. The targeted firm’s stock price rose to $35.55 before markets opened, an increase of about 44% from the prior day’s closing price.

            The indictment alleges that Yang began to collect material non-public information (MNPI) about the impending deal in October 2021 and with Tian began discussing and executing security purchases of the target company in November 2021. Communicating in Chinese on messaging apps, they allegedly shared MNPI with a group that grew to include at least five other people, including two graduate students at Georgetown University in Washington D.C. and a trader who was in China at the time.

            Members of the group used this inside information to purchase stock and options contracts in the target company based on information they knew was non-public and confidential.  On November 22, 2021, Yang allegedly sent a WeChat message to her husband Tian discussing their securities purchases, stating, “We have over 100,000 in there. If the acquisition is completed with 3.5b, we can get a Tesla. Trade in and don’t need a loan haha.”

            In a series of additional messages, Yang told another trader that she knew the target company stock would rise because her company was acquiring it, information that was not publicly known at the time.

            When the news of the corporate acquisition was made public, the group generated hundreds of thousands of dollars in profit.

            This case is being investigated by the Washington Field Office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and is being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Kevin Rosenberg, Co-Chief of the Fraud, Public Corruption, and Civil Rights Section and Special Assistant United States Attorney Rami Sibay.

An indictment is merely an allegation. All defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law.

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