Expedia IT worker gets 15 months for insider trading scheme

SEATTLE – A former information technology worker at Expedia Inc. has been sentenced to 15 months in prison after admitting he accessed the email accounts of top executives and made lucrative illegal stock trades based on the inside information he discovered.

Jonathan Ly was sentenced Tuesday in federal court in Seattle. U.S. District Judge John Coughenour also imposed three years of supervised release.

Prosecutors said Ly made more than $330,000 from the trades he made with the information from 2013 to 2015.

He pleaded guilty to one count of securities fraud in U.S. District Court in Seattle in December.

Ly worked for the Bellevue-based online travel giant, but was based in the San Francisco office of one of its brands, Hotwire.com. Prosecutors said he was given remote access to the computers of company employees so that he could address technology issues.

U.S. Attorney Annette Hayes said Tuesday it wasn’t a one-time lapse in judgment.