The U.S. Department of Justice has charged two Volkswagen engineers with securities fraud for insider trading connected to the Volkswagen-Rivian joint venture, unsealing the indictment on July 24, 2026, in the Southern District of New York (TechCrunch; DOJ).

Michael Stamp and Marcus Plank, both residents of San Jose, California, were arrested and will appear in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. The case, filed in SDNY, has been assigned to U.S. District Judge Katherine Polk Failla. If convicted of federal securities fraud, the defendants each face up to 25 years in prison (DOJ).

According to the indictment, Stamp and Plank traded Rivian stock and options using confidential information about the joint venture between Volkswagen and Rivian, which was internally codenamed "Project Climb." The two allegedly generated more than $300,000 in illegal profits from those trades. Stamp allegedly realized approximately $250,000 in profits, while Plank allegedly realized approximately $50,000. A close family member of Plank also allegedly realized about $12,000 in profits from the trading (DOJ).

Rivian and Volkswagen publicly announced the joint venture on June 25, 2024. Rivian's stock price rose 23 percent following the announcement. The DOJ's press release, published under the title "Two Auto Engineers Charged With Insider Trading," is available on the SDNY website, and the unsealed indictment itself is posted as a downloadable document (DOJ press release; DOJ indictment).

U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton issued a statement on behalf of the SDNY regarding the charges (TechCrunch).

Bloomberg and Crain's Chicago Business both confirmed the indictment was unsealed on Friday, July 24, 2026, referring to the defendants as former Volkswagen engineers (Bloomberg; Crain's Chicago Business).

The charges follow a familiar pattern in corporate deal-related insider trading enforcement. Engineers with access to pre-announcement deal details are not typical subjects of SDNY securities fraud cases, which more often target executives, investment bankers, or legal advisors occupying roles closer to the deal's financial structuring. The involvement of technical staff in positions where they obtained material non-public information about a corporate transaction speaks to how widely deal-related information circulates within large organizations during the negotiation phase, and how far prosecutors are willing to reach down the org chart to pursue trades that exploit it.

The alleged profits here, roughly $300,000 split across two individuals and a family member, are modest by the standards of insider trading cases that typically draw SDNY attention. The willingness of federal prosecutors to pursue the matter at that dollar threshold is consistent with a broader posture of using high-visibility cases to signal enforcement reach, rather than calibrating charges strictly to the magnitude of illicit gains. The maximum statutory penalty of 25 years per count for securities fraud carries weight regardless of profit size, and the DOJ's decision to file in SDNY rather than in the Northern District of California, where both defendants reside and will make their initial appearances, signals prosecutorial intent to keep the case in a venue historically sympathetic to securities fraud charges.

The codename "Project Climb" for the Rivian joint venture is a detail that likely surfaced through the DOJ's investigative process rather than from public filings. Internal project codenames are routinely used by automakers to compartmentalize pre-announcement deal activity, and their appearance in an indictment indicates that prosecutors obtained testimony or communications from within the company's internal deal team.

What remains to be seen is whether the DOJ's investigation extends beyond these two individuals. Insider trading cases involving corporate insiders frequently expand as prosecutors examine whether information was shared more broadly or whether additional trades were executed through other accounts. The unsealed indictment as currently reported names only Stamp and Plank, but the inclusion of a family member's trading activity in the alleged profits suggests the investigation already reached at least one layer beyond the primary defendants.

The broader context worth noting is that the Rivian-Volkswagen partnership was one of the more closely watched deals in the EV sector, combining Rivian's software and electrical architecture expertise with Volkswagen's manufacturing scale and global distribution. A 23 percent single-day stock move on announcement is the kind of market reaction that creates both the opportunity and the enforcement incentive: substantial price dislocation gives insider traders a profitable window, and it gives regulators a clear signal to scrutinize pre-announcement trading volumes for anomalies.