A former quantitative analyst for a global asset manager was charged with securities and wire fraud for allegedly using nonpublic information to commit insider trading that netted him more than $8.5m in profit, according to a complaint unsealed on 23 September in federal court.

The analyst, Sergei Polevikov, who worked at OppenheimerFunds, is accused of operating a front-running scheme in which he would use his wife’s personal brokerage account to buy or sell stock in advance of large pending purchase or sale orders by his employer on behalf of its clients.