Palo Alto terminated Nellore earlier in 2019, and he was apparently bent on fleeing. He booked a one-way flight to India shortly after the FBI interviewed him in May, and he was arrested at the airport. All of the group faces fraud charges from the SEC, while Nellore and one of his friends, Sivannarayana Barama, also face federal criminal charges.

The case illustrates a common risk in digital security. A company's data is only safe if those who oversee it are trustworthy or have only limited access to that information. At the same time, technology may have been key to the charges. The SEC said the case came about thanks to "enhanced data analysis tools" that spotted the suspicious trading. In previous years, the activity might have gone unnoticed.