Jun 26, 2026
New Jersey-based Justin Jennings, 27, had a short career in professional soccer in Europe. Now his financial career may be cut short.
As Bloomberg reveals, federal authorities have handed him a yellow card for insider trading.
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The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Department of Justice (DOJ) accuse him of stealing secrets off his former girlfriend’s laptop to make $2.7 million in illegal trades between February 2022 and October 2024.
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As Bloomberg reports, his ex’s former employer, New York-based public relations firm Joele Frank, said it worked with federal authorities on the investigation and she herself was not under investigation.
The DOJ has charged Jennings with breaching Section 12 of the Securities Exchange Act, including eight counts of securities fraud. The SEC filed a complaint against Jennings on June 23 with the U.S. District Court in New Jersey.
The charges have not been proven in court. If convicted, Jennings faces up to 20 years in prison on each of eight charges of insider trading — as well as additional jail time for securities fraud and transacting in criminal proceeds.
Moneywise has reached out to Jennings for comment through his company.
Here’s a closer look at the case, as well as past cases where romantic cheating led to insider trading.
Bedroom access to company secrets
According to the DOJ, Jennings and his ex started dating in 2019 while he was playing soccer in Europe and she was in college. He retired from soccer in 2021.
His girlfriend got a job as a junior account executive in a PR firm whose clients included Apollo Global Management and Discover Financial Services.
Their relationship grew more serious during the pandemic. According to the DOJ, Jennings spent days at a time at his girlfriend’s place, where she worked from home on her laptop.
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As a PR rep involved in corporate announcements — including draft press releases — his girlfriend was privy to information about clients’ corporate acquisitions and earnings before they were made public.
According to court documents filed by the DOJ, she trusted Jennings and didn’t sign out of her laptop while working from home, leaving him with easy access.
Federal authorities say Jennings took advantage of that access over the course of more than two years, betraying her, her firm and their clients.
The SEC and DOJ accuse him of stealing insider information to make profitable trades, buying and selling securities through his company — Wyoming-based Vortex Securities LLC — and his own brokerage account.
In light of the charges, his lawyers Robert Stahl and Laura Gasiorowski released a statement that they were confident Jennings and Vortex “will be vindicated.”
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When cheating means insider trading
In 2024, The Wall Street Journal reported on a spate of cases of insider trading and linked them to the rise of remote work, suggesting it was a crime of opportunity for romantic partners.
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Edward Imperatore is a former Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York who now works as a defence attorney for the law firm Morrison & Foerster. He specializes in white-collar crime.
“During Covid, there was an uptick in brazen conduct,” he told the Wall Street Journal. “In a work-from-home environment, people acted with more impunity.”
Steven Teixeira, former compliance chief of a Chinese fintech company, pleaded guilty to federal charges of insider trading in 2023, but has not yet been sentenced. He stole confidential business information from his girlfriend’s work laptop while they were in lockdown in Queen’s, New York City.
She was an executive assistant at wealth management giant Morgan Stanley. He used a mouse-jiggler to prevent her laptop from locking so he could get into it without a password.
It didn’t end there. According to the SEC, Teixeira shared the information with his friend Jordan Meadow, a stock broker at Spartan Capital at the time — who in turn shared it with his colleague Ronald Smith.
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Meadow and Smith allegedly used it to make millions for their brokerage clients, raking in $500,000 in commissions. These allegations have not been proven in court. If the men are found guilty, they could face sentences of years in prison for securities fraud.
In 2023, Seth Markin, a one-time FBI trainee, was sentenced to 15 months in prison for insider trading after he tapped into his ex’s computer to steal information about pharma powerhouse Merck’s 2021 takeover of Pandion Therapeutics.
She was a law associate at the law firm working on the takeover. In turn, he shared that confidential information with 20 others.
As Imperatore told the Wall Street Journal, it’s hard to represent clients like Teixeira and Markin.
“To a juror, this is the bad boyfriend,” he said. “He’s acting badly in a relationship in a way that goes beyond the four corners of insider trading.”
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Laura Boast is an Associate Editor with Moneywise.com and a lifelong content creator who has reached international audiences at Discovery, CBC, Blue Ant Media, Bond Brand Loyalty and more.
