Former Pfizer statistician charged by SEC for insider trading ahead of COVID-19 announcement

Per SEC

Former Pfizer employees Amit Dagar and another individual were charged by the SEC for insider trading before the company's COVID-19 Paxlovid announcement. The announcement of Paxlovid resulted in a nearly 11% single-day gain.

Pfizer's announcement of the Paxlovid COVID-19 antiviral treatment resulted in its largest single-day price gain since 2009. This was the information used by Dagar and another person who allegedly "purchased short-term, out-of-the-money Pfizer call options" that would expire the next day.

Atul Bhiwapurkar, his close friend and business partner, was the other person working with Dagar. The announcement was released on November 5, 2021, and the SEC complaint alleges that the pair profited from the single-day investment.

Dagar reportedly earned $214,395, a 2,458% return, while Bhiwapurkar gained $60,300, a 791% return. Joseph Sansone, Chief of the Market Abuse Unit, gave a statement regarding the pair.

Sansone: “Dagar and Bhiwapurkar allegedly leveraged this information by trading out-of-the-money call options to generate massive one-day returns. Thanks to our surveillance, the defendants must now face the consequences of their greed.”

Recently, it was reported that Pfizer would run out of penicillin doses that treat common infections like syphilis, strep throat, etc.

At the start of the year, Pfizer had Twitter censor users tweeting at them asking for generic low cost vaccines, according to Lee Fang of Twitter Files.

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