Nedko Nedev, Market Manipulation, New York 2023
A Bulgarian man was arrested and charged in Manhattan federal court with a $400M market manipulation scheme involving Avon stock, as well as market manipulation and insider trading of two other securities.
Nedko Nedev, 38, a citizen of Bulgaria and the United States, was arrested in Bulgaria and his extradition to the U.S. will be sought. The case has been assigned to Judge Kimba M. Wood.
The United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Preet Bharara, and the Assistant Director-in-Charge of the New York Field Office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (“FBI”), Diego Rodriguez, announced the arrest and unsealing of an eight-count indictment charging Nedko Nedev with:
various crimes related to market manipulation, insider trading, and aggravated identity theft for devising and carrying out a series of schemes to manipulate the public market for two securities – Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory, Inc. (“Rocky Mountain”), and Avon Products, Inc. (“Avon”) – through sham tender offers filed publicly with the Securities and Exchange Commission (the “SEC”), and
trading on material, nonpublic information about an impending tender offer by Bulgarian company Euroins Insurance Group AD (“Euroins”) for U.S.-based insurer Tower Group International Ltd. (“Tower Group”), which Nedko Nedev knew about because of his role advising the proposed acquirer.
The sham offer for Avon, a company with more than 400 million shares outstanding, caused a 400-percent increase over the average per-day trading volume, resulting in a manipulation of the market by hundreds of millions of dollars, and caused the New York Stock Exchange (“NYSE”) to halt trading three times in Avon shares in the half-hour period following the sham offer.
The SEC previously filed civil charges against Nedko Nedev for market manipulation in June 2015.
Nedko Nedev is facing charges of:
manipulating the public market for two securities through sham tender offers filed publicly with the SEC, and
trading on material, nonpublic information about an impending tender offer by Bulgarian company Euroins Insurance Group AD for U.S.-based insurer Tower Group.
He was arrested in Bulgaria and his extradition to the U.S. will be sought. The case has been assigned to Judge Kimba M. Wood.
The defendant is facing a possible prison sentence if convicted of these charges.
Key Facts
- State: New York
- Category: White Collar Crime
- Source: DOJ Press Release â†â€â€
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