Trading giant Susquehanna Investment Group said it was attempting to unmask the identities of individuals it claims made at least $100 million trading on inside information about a Chinese government crackdown on cross-border brokerages last month.
The Pennsylvania-based market-maker, which says it was the counterparty on most of the alleged insider trades, sued 100 John Doe defendants in Manhattan federal court on Monday. Susquehanna is seeking to recover more than $70 million it says it lost to what it believes is one of the largest insider-trading schemes in recent memory, Bloomberg reported.
While it’s unusual for a major Wall Street firm to sue as a victim of insider trading - which is normally policed by the Securities and Exchange Commission and federal prosecutors - in suing the dozens of unknown traders, aka "John Does", Susquehanna is using a tactic sometimes employed by the SEC to seek information it hopes will identify the alleged insider traders.
According to Susquehanna, many of the trades were made from accounts at Interactive Brokers Group Inc., as well as the platforms of two firms targeted in the Chinese crackdown, Futu Holdings and Up Fintech’s Tiger Brokers (we discussed this in May in "China Launch
