Hari Prasad Sure, et al.

U.S. SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION

Litigation Release No. 26217 / January 14, 2025

Securities and Exchange Commission v. Hari Prasad Sure, et al., No. 4:22-cv-01967 (N.D. Cal. filed Mar. 28, 2022)

SEC Obtains Final Judgments Against Seven Defendants in Insider Trading Case

On January 9, 2025, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California entered final judgments against Hari Prasad Sure, Lokesh Lagudu, Chotu Prabhu Tej Pulagam, Dileep Kumar Reddy Kamujula, Sai Mounika Nekkalapudi, Abhishek Dharmapurikar, and Chetan Prabhu Sree Karteek Pulagam, resolving the SEC’s insider trading case filed against them.  

The SEC’s complaint, filed on March 28, 2022, alleges that Sure, Lagudu, and Chotu Pulagam, software engineers employed during the relevant time at Twilio Inc., a San Francisco-based cloud computing communications company, and four of their family members and friends engaged in insider trading in advance of Twilio’s positive first quarter 2020 earnings announcement. According to the complaint, the insider defendants knowingly tipped off Kamujula, Nekkalapudi, Dharmapurikar, and Chetan Pulagam to trade Twilio options and stock in advance of the May 6, 2020 announcement while in possession of material non-public information concerning customer usage. The complaint further alleges that the scheme generated more than $1 million in illegal trading profits.

The SEC’s complaint charges all seven defendants with violations of Section 10(b) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and Rule 10b-5 thereunder. The defendants consented to the entry of final judgments in the SEC action that provide for permanent injunctive relief from the provisions charged in the complaint; disgorgement of illegal trading profits plus prejudgment interest from Sure, Kamujula, Nekkalapudi, Dharmapurikar, and Chetan Pulagam; and civil penalties from Lagudu, Chotu Pulagam, Nekkalapudi, Dharmapurikar, and Chetan Pulagam.   

Defendants Sure and Kamujula had previously pled guilty to criminal charges for securities fraud in parallel criminal actions brought by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of California, United States v. Sure, No. 4:23-cr-00254, and United States v. Kamujula, No. 4:22-cr-00131.
The SEC’s litigation was conducted by Marc Katz and Erin E. Wilk of the San Francisco Regional Office, with assistance from Jan Jindra of the SEC’s Division of Economic and Risk Analysis. The case was supervised by Jason H. Lee of the San Francisco Regional Office.