On September 5, 2025, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit affirmed a judgment of conviction against Amit Dagar, who was found guilty of securities fraud and securities fraud conspiracy in 2024. Dagar allegedly purchased securities based on material nonpublic information (“MNPI”) regarding positive clinical trials for Paxlovid, an antiviral treatment for COVID-19, before the results were made public. Dagar had appealed his conviction on the grounds that his Fifth Amendment rights had been violated when the government constructively amended the superseding indictment against him by introducing a new theory of the case in its summation. Dagar also argued that the Southern District of New York was not the proper venue for the case because there was some uncertainty regarding the location of the servers used to execute the trades at issue.
The Second Circuit upheld Dagar’s conviction and disagreed that the government had constructively amended the superseding indictment. The court found that the evidence introduced by federal prosecutors at trial provided context regarding Dagar’s state of mind at the time he received the MNPI regarding Paxlovid and was closely related to the specific charges in the indictment. In fact, the court added that it had “never found constructive amendment in a securities fraud case when the government simply demonstrated the different ways in which a defendant might have interpreted the MNPI he possessed.” The court held that, in light of the “significant flexibility” afforded to the government in presenting its case, the evidence presented by federal prosecutors was “plainly within the charged core of criminality.”
With regards to the venue challenge, the court acknowledged that the Securities Act of 1934, which formed the basis of Dagar’s charges, provides that venue is appropriate in “the district wherein any act or transaction constituting the [criminal] violation occurred.” The court held that venue in the Southern District of New York was appropriate for several reasons, including evidence demonstrating that Dagar had traded on Nasdaq exchanges that are located within the Southern District of New York and had purchased options from a broker whose registered address was in the Southern District of New York. The Court concluded that the Dagar’s claims regarding the unknown location of the servers used to execute the trades were “not dispositive, or even particularly relevant.”
In January 2024, a federal jury found Dagar guilty of securities fraud and conspiracy to commit securities fraud at the conclusion of a one-week trial. Dagar was sentenced to nine months imprisonment and ordered to pay approximately $272,000, which represented the amount of proceeds traceable to the insider trading scheme. Dagar’s co-defendant Atul Bhiwapurkar, his close friend and business partner who allegedly purchased securities based on a tip from Dagar, pleaded guilty to one count of a six-count indictment in October 2023. He was sentenced to three years of probation and ordered to forfeit approximately $60,300. In January 2025, the Securities and Exchange Commission also obtained final judgments against Dagar and Bhiwapurkar to resolve parallel civil charges that were filed in 2023.
Summary Order | Dagar Judgment | Bhiwapurkar Judgment