A Ventura resident and former employee of The Trade Desk was arrested Aug. 20 on federal charges that he made more than $338,000 in profits through insider trading of The Trade Desk stock.
Jesse Mitchell, 48, was indicted on Aug. 17 by a grand jury in New York. The indictment was sealed until he was arrested in California three days later, according to an Aug. 20 news release from the U.S Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission also filed a civil lawsuit against Mitchell on Aug. 20, accusing him of insider trading in the same trades covered in the criminal indictment.
Mitchell could not be reached for comment.
According to the civil suit, he worked for The Trade Desk from June 2024 to April
2026, as the company's senior director of financial planning and analysis.
The Trade Desk is an online advertising company based in Ventura. Its stock is traded on the Nasdaq exchange.
According to both the civil and criminal complaints, Mitchell's position gave him access to The Trade Desk's financial results before the company released its quarterly earnings reports. Prosecutors allege that in 2024 and 2025, Mitchell made two stock trades that were based on confidential financial information that The Trade Desk had not publicly disclosed. Making trades based on material, nonpublic information is illegal under federal law.
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The largest of the allegedly illegal trades was in February 2025. On Feb. 12, The Trade Desk released its earnings report for the fourth quarter of 2024. Its revenue for the quarter was $741 million, well below the $756 million it had predicted in its previously disclosed public estimates.
That was the first time The Trade Desk had missed its revenue target since the company went public in 2016, the indictment states. The Trade Desk's share price dropped 33% the next day, one of the worst trading days in the company's history.
It was, however, a good trading day for Mitchell, according to the federal grand jury indictment and the civil lawsuit.
Those documents state that in the week before the disappointing earnings release, Mitchell paid about $15,000 to buy 200 "short-dated, out-of-the money" put options on The Trade Desk's stock.
A put option is a contract that gives the buyer the right to sell shares of a stock at a specific price before a specific deadline. An "out of the money" put option is one that has a trigger point lower than the current price, so it only pays off if the stock goes down. And a "short-dated" put option is one that comes due quickly.
Mitchell's put options on The Trade Desk expired on Feb. 14, 2025, the indictment states. That means he was making a bet that his company's stock would decline in the days immediately after its earnings report.
When the stock did exactly that on Feb. 13, 2025, Mitchell sold all of his put options, for a profit of a little over $318,000, the indictment states.
Six months earlier, Mitchell profited when The Trade Desk released good financial news. On Aug. 8, 2024, The Trade desk published its earnings report for the second quarter of that year. Its revenue was above its previously disclosed projections, and the stock jumped 12% the next day.
In the two weeks before the earnings announcement, Mitchell had purchased 3,850 shares of The Trade Desk's stock in eight separate trades, according to the SEC lawsuit. He sold them after the earnings release, at a profit of just under $20,000.
In both instances, Mitchell traded during a "blackout period," when employees are barred by company policy from buying or selling The Trade Desk's stock. At The Trade Desk, the blackout periods start two weeks before the end of every fiscal quarter and end after that quarter's financial results are publicly released.
In addition to banning trading during those blackout periods, The Trade Desk's company policies also forbid employees from any trading in options on the company's stock, the SEC lawsuit states.
The suit says that on June 4, 2024, Mitchell certified that he had been trained on the company's insider trading policy. The Trade Desk's lawyers also sent repeated emails to the entire staff reminding them of the insider trading rules.
The civil lawsuit is seeking a court order for Mitchell to "disgorge all ill-gotten gains," with interest, and to pay additional penalties. It also asks for a permanent prohibition so that Mitchell cannot serve as an officer or director of any publicly-traded company.
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In the criminal case, Mitchell faces two charges of securities fraud. The maximum sentence for the first charge is 20 years, and the maximum sentence for the other charge is 25 years.
If Mitchell is convicted, it would be very unusual for a judge to give him the maximum sentence. Federal guidelines from the United States Sentencing Commission call for a sentence of anywhere from 33 to 87 months for insider trading with a gain of more than $250,000 but less than $550,000, depending on the defendant's criminal history and other factors.
Tony Biasotti is an investigative and watchdog reporter for the Ventura County Star. Reach him at tbiasotti@vcstar.com. This story was made possible by a grant from the Ventura County Community Foundation's Fund to Support Local Journalism.
This article originally appeared on Ventura County Star: Former Trade Desk employee arrested on insider trading charges
