The best payday came in July 2023. Federal prosecutors say Justin Jennings read a client’s unreleased earnings miss, put roughly $105,000 into bets the stock would fall, and sold the morning after it did for a $985,000 profit. The client’s draft sat on his girlfriend’s work laptop.
Jennings, 27, a former pro soccer player from Rockaway Township, New Jersey, was hit late Tuesday with securities fraud charges. Prosecutors in New Jersey allege he made $2.7 million trading on confidential information he took from the laptop. The charges cover deals involving eight companies, among them Apollo Global Management.
How prosecutors say it worked
The woman, who has not been named, is an account executive at a top Wall Street PR firm. During the more than two years the couple dated, according to the criminal complaint, she shared “confidential and private details about her work and personal life,” including the passwords for her laptop and online services.
Prosecutors say Jennings waited until she stepped away from the screen, then opened draft press releases and internal memos for announcements that had not yet gone out. He bought options before the news broke and cashed out within hours of it, the indictment charged. Investigators found screenshots of draft corporate announcements in his iCloud account, the SEC complaint said.
Other trades paid well too. A truck-stop chain’s buyout earlier that year cleared about $859,000, prosecutors said. A takeover the following year brought in $374,550. A deal involving an electric-vehicle charging company added $356,000.
The firm and the defense
The PR firm was not named in the charges. Sources close to the case said it is Joele Frank, and Bloomberg first reported the identity. The firm said in a statement that, according to the charges, Jennings “exploited a personal relationship with a now former junior employee to illegally obtain confidential information.” It added: “There are no allegations against the firm or any employee, current or former.”
Jennings’ lawyers, Robert Stahl and Laura Gasiorwski, said they are confident that “once the evidence is presented,” Jennings and his company “will be fully vindicated.”
The Securities and Exchange Commission filed a parallel civil suit against Jennings and his investment firm, Vortex Strategies, alleging insider trading ahead of eight significant corporate disclosures. The agency is seeking to claw back his profits, plus interest and penalties.
From Latvia to Wall Street trades
Born on Long Island, Jennings is a 6-foot center forward who briefly played in the second tier of Latvian pro soccer, landing at FK Jūrnieks after a tryout tour. He retired in late 2021 and returned to New Jersey. The SEC says he drifted through property management and freelance coding before calling himself a data-science entrepreneur.
Prosecutors say he has no finance career at all. That did not stop him from setting up his company and writing himself checks with memos such as “capital contribution” and “profit dist.”
The top charge, securities fraud, carries up to 25 years in prison. The FBI’s Newark office ran the investigation.
Sources
- Ex-pro soccer player raked in $2.7M trading on secrets pilfered from girlfriend’s laptop, feds allege
- Ex-pro soccer player raked in $2.7M trading on secrets pilfered from girlfriend's laptop, feds allege – Manhattan Daily
