Sonic Co-Creator Yuji Naka Arrested for Insider Trading - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 17 November 2022 / 3,837 ViewsYuji Naka, the lead programmer on the original Sonic the Hedgehog and most recently the director for Balan Wonderland, has been arrested by the Tokyo District Public Prosecutors Office for insider trading under the Financial Instruments and Exchange Act.
Naka learned important information about the mobile title Dragon Quest Tact while working at Square Enix. He was said to have purchased 10,000 for about 2.8 million yen ($20,000) before information became publicly available.
A former employee of Square Enix Taisuke Sasaki and acquaintance Fumiaki Suzuki were also arrested on suspicion of insider trading. It is believed the two purchased around 162,000 shares worth about 47.2 million yen ($337,000).
Naka is a video game programmer, designer and producer. He has worked on the original Sonic the Hedgehog series, Nights into Dreams, Sonic Adventure, the Phantasy Star series, and most recently 2021's Balan Wonderworld.
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can contact the author on Twitter @TrunksWD.
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If you're going to make some insider trades, do it with a lot more than $20,000.
Even without that, he had to end up in jail for balan wonderworld XD (jk)
Sonic: "that's no good!"
Well, that's something I didn't expect to read today.
Prison Wonderworld.
I guess he isn't gonna go fast anymore.
Really shouldn't have been anywhere near video game stock.
plays Sonic 1 game over music
It seems to be a case of the wrong Yuji Naka making the trade rather than the Balan Naka who would have taken two years to make the trade thus being safe from accusations of insider he reverted back to Sonic Naka and this is the result.
Seems like he made a bad bet.
His bad bet was that he wouldn't get caught.
Second one was doing it for such little money.
Well beggars can't be choosers and looking at Balan Wonderworld its obvious that
the money came from them stripping out 90% of that the games budget since $20.000 fits with that scenario.
LOL