{"id":918978,"date":"2026-07-07T16:48:27","date_gmt":"2026-07-07T16:48:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/918978\/"},"modified":"2026-07-07T16:48:27","modified_gmt":"2026-07-07T16:48:27","slug":"ai-ceo-pleaded-guilty-in-u-s-to-trading-on-insider-tips-from-lawyers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/918978\/","title":{"rendered":"AI CEO pleaded guilty in U.S. to trading on insider tips from lawyers"},"content":{"rendered":"

The founder and chief executive of an AI startup secretly pleaded guilty last year to participating in \u200ba vast scheme in \u200bwhich attorneys at major \u200blaw firms tipped traders about mergers their employers were advising on. Court records unsealed on Monday show that Arya Bolurfrushan, a former Goldman Sachs<\/a> banker who founded Abu Dhabi-based AppliedAI, pleaded guilty in June 2025 after \u2060striking \u200ca deal with federal prosecutors in Boston who were \u2060working to build cases against dozens of other people accused of participating in the long-running insider trading scheme. Those individuals include Nicolo Nourafchan, who had worked at the law firms Sidley Austin, Latham & Watkins and Goodwin Procter before prosecutors in May \u200cunveiled charges against him and 29 other people accused of engaging in a scheme to profit from confidential information about mergers underway. Bolurfrushan pleaded guilty to conspiring \u200bto commit securities fraud in a plea agreement where prosecutors agreed to recommend that he be sentenced to two years in prison and forfeit $954,496 he derived from the scheme.<\/p>\n

Jordan Estes, his lawyer at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, declined to comment. Nine other people also pleaded \u2060guilty in secret proceedings in the years before prosecutors announced the indictments.<\/p>\n

Prosecutors say Bolurfrushan traded on tips \u200cpassed along to him by Nourafchan and his partner, personal injury \u200cattorney Robert Yadgarov, in exchange for a cut of any trading profits.<\/p>\n

Bolurfrushan had met the two lawyers through one of Nourafchan’s family members and was recruited into the scheme in 2023 while he was in \u2060Dubai, according to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, which settled civil claims against Bolurfrushan in \u2060a related lawsuit on Monday.<\/p>\n

Nourafchan and Yadgarov pleaded not guilty last \u2060month to securities fraud and other charges and are awaiting trial.<\/p>\n

According to prosecutors and the SEC, Nourafchan, while working as an associate at Goodwin Procter, in \u200bSeptember 2023 accessed electronic documents concerning a deal \u200che was not working on, the planned acquisition of Goodwin’s client Orchard Therapeutics by Kyowa Kirin Co Ltd.<\/p>\n

Nourafchan tipped Bolurfrushan off to the expected merger, allowing him to buy Orchard securities, authorities say. The SEC said he earned $950,000 in trading profits and passed along about $60,000 to Nourafchan and Yadgarov.<\/p>\n

Bolurfrushan engaged in insider trading \u200bagain in mid-2024, based on a tip about \u200cinvestment firm Sixth Street’s plans to acquire insurer Enstar for $5.1 billion, according to charging documents.<\/p>\n

Choose CNBC as your preferred source on Google and never miss a moment from the most trusted name in business news.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The founder and chief executive of an AI startup secretly pleaded guilty last year to participating in \u200ba…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":918979,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[21],"tags":[691,738,81,135050,17628,7074,9578,158,67,132,68],"class_list":["post-918978","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-business-news","tag-collusion","tag-corruption","tag-goldman-sachs-group-inc","tag-securities-fraud","tag-technology","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116879720856036509","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/918978","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=918978"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/918978\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/918979"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=918978"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=918978"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=918978"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}