SEATTLE �� A former Expedia official has pleaded guilty to securities fraud and faces up to 25 years in federal prison for stealing proprietary information from his bosses and using it to make more than $300,000 in illegal trades on the stock market, the U.S. attorney's office said.
Jonathan Ly, 28, of San Francisco, appeared in U.S. District Court in Seattle Monday, where he was charged with and pleaded guilty to using his position as a senior computer support technician at Expedia's Bay Area offices to access the email of company executives in what U.S. Attorney Annette Hayes referred to as a "get-rich-quick scheme."
FBI investigators say Ly made nearly $331,000 on the trades. The Securities and Exchange Commission has filed a separate civil action to require him to pay back the money.
Ly is to be sentenced Feb. 28.
According to court documents, Ly worked as a senior IT technician in the San Francisco office of Expedia subsidiary Hotwire.com. Ly had computer network privileges that allowed him to remotely access the electronic devices of Expedia executives.
Prosecutors alleged that Ly used those privileges to access documents and emails containing nonpublic information which he later used to execute a series of what the government called "well-timed trades" of Expedia stock options, netting him hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Ly left the company in 2015, but kept an Expedia laptop computer and continued to access private information, disguising his network footprint to make it appear others were doing it, the U.S. attorney's office said. Expedia eventually discovered the intrusions and contacted the FBI.
Securities fraud is punishable by up to 25 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
