SEATTLE — A former financial analyst at Amazon pleaded guilty to an insider-trading charge Thursday, admitting in court he tipped off a college friend to details about the company’s forthcoming first-quarter earnings report in spring 2015 — information the friend used to make a quick $116,000.
Brett D. Kennedy, 26, of Blaine, resigned from Amazon in May. Prosecutors said that his former fraternity brother at the University of Washington, Maziar Rezakhani, made stock trades based on the information Kennedy provided, quickly profited $116,000 and then paid Kennedy $10,000 in cash for the tip.
The insider trading scheme came to light as investigators were looking into a separate, $3 million fraud by Rezakhani, for which he is serving five years in federal prison.
In that case, Rezakhani, who had been running a business selling iPhones overseas, falsely claimed a shipment of more than 1,200 iPhones had been stolen. He persuaded credit card companies to reverse his charges for the phones, then sold the phones through his business. He also submitted false tax and bank records to obtain a multimillion-dollar line of credit from a local bank.
