DOJ Indicts Jewish Group for 'Large-Scale, Decade-Long Insider Trading Scheme'

The DOJ has indicted a Jewish group accused of organizing a "large-scale, decade-long insider trading scheme that netted tens of millions of dollars in illicit profits."

The alleged scheme involved 30 people—one of whom already appears to have fled to Israel.

"The defendants,… https://t.co/E4nuafG9ey pic.twitter.com/u3BUqzWBji

— Chris Menahan 🇺🇸 (@infolibnews) May 7, 2026

“With today's arrests, the FBI has dismantled a large-scale, decade-long, international organized criminal network of corporate attorneys and financial professionals who are accused of stealing and trading on material, non-public information from several of our nation’s leading law firms, including one right here in Massachusetts. Everyone charged today is accused of scoring significant profits from expected market moves and making out like bandits. That’s not merely gaming the system – it’s a federal crime,” said Ted E. Docks, Special Agent in Charge of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Boston Division. “Anyone who engages in insider trading fundamentally undermines the trust necessary for our financial markets to function, and the FBI is committed to ensuring that those markets are a level playing field, not just profiting those with friends in the know.”

As alleged in the charging documents, Nicolo Nourafchan, who was a licensed corporate attorney at several large law firms, and others, accessed their law firms’ internal computer networks to view confidential documents relating to pending acquisitions, including confidential transactions on which Nourafchan did not work, and then provided the material non-public information (MNPI) to others in exchange for kickbacks. Nicolo Nourafchan and his partner, Robert Yadgarov, another New York attorney, allegedly recruited other attorneys and insiders to serve as sources of inside information. In exchange for the MNPI, Nourafchan and Yadgarov allegedly paid their sources kickbacks consisting of up to hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash.

Nourafchan and Yadgarov also allegedly provided the MNPI to a network of traders and middlemen whom they also enlisted to join the scheme. The middlemen, including Gavryel Silverstein and Lorenzo Nourafchan, allegedly provided the MNPI to other traders and tippees as a way of attempting to obscure the connections between sources and traders. Meanwhile, the traders allegedly executed trades while in possession of MNPI, either on Nourafchan and Yadgarov’s behalf or on their own behalf, in exchange for their agreement to kickback illicit trading proceeds to Nourafchan, Yadgarov, and others. Many traders allegedly passed the MNPI onto other traders, again in exchange for their agreement to kick back illicit trading proceeds up the chain to the sources of the MNPI, including Nourafchan and Yadgarov.

In total, it is alleged that overseas traders (including Gavrilov and Izraelov) and traders located in California, Florida, New Jersey and New York, among other locations, traded while in possession of MNPI ahead of nearly 30 M&A deals involving public companies, including some of the largest M&A deals of the last decade, on national and foreign securities exchanges.

As alleged, the defendants and other co-conspirators sought to keep law enforcement from learning about the scheme by, among other means, using burner phones, encrypted applications, coded language, including about “flights,” and in-person meetups where conspirators turned off their electronic devices or put them elsewhere before communicating with each other.

The Trump admin has created a "pardon industry" where "pardon seekers routinely offer to pay [lobbyists] as much as $1M or more, often with bonus payments triggered by a successful outcome," the NYT reports.

One of the people successfully pardoned was nursing home tax scammer… pic.twitter.com/vmm4uzgw6o

— Chris Menahan 🇺🇸 (@infolibnews) March 6, 2026