SEC v. Brett Kennedy, et al. (insider trading, 2017)

Settled

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In September 2017 the SEC charged a former Amazon analyst, Brett Kennedy, and two others over trading on Amazon's first-quarter 2015 earnings before release. Sadeghi and Kennedy agreed to settlements, subject to court approval, totalling about $21,600 disgorgement and an $11,600 penalty; the claims against Rezakhani continued.

The record

What was ordered

Civil penalty

$11.6k

Disgorgement

$21.6k

Prejudgment interest

$1.9k

Total relief

$35.1k

Alleged gain

—

A dash means the release did not state a figure we could extract, not that the figure is zero. Penalty and disgorgement are stored separately so aggregates across the library do not double-count the same dollars.

What is alleged to have happened

The complaint alleged that Kennedy accessed non-public earnings information without authorisation and gave it to his fraternity brother Maziar Rezakhani, who paid him $10,000 and traded for more than $116,000 in profits, sharing proceeds with adviser Sam Sadeghi.

Sadeghi agreed to disgorgement of $11,599.74, interest of $1,035.39 and a penalty of $11,599.74; Kennedy to disgorgement of $10,000 and interest of $875.36. The stored figures are the sums of the two settlements. A parallel criminal case was announced against Kennedy.

What technique is this, and how does it work?

This action is tagged with one technique in our taxonomy. The tagging is ours: regulators charge statutory provisions, not technique names, so the mapping is an editorial judgement described in our editorial policy.

• Insider trading — see how it works, what statute it engages, and every other action tagged the same way.

Timeline

1. 2017-09-07 Litigation release published

Primary documents

Everything on this page derives from the documents below. Where our summary and the primary document disagree, the primary document is right.

• SEC litigation release

The linked release is a work of the United States government and is not subject to copyright. Our summary and narrative above are our own writing.

Related actions

Other actions in the library sharing at least one technique tag with this one.

Record added September 10, 2026. submit a correction.