Susquehanna Securities LLC and Susquehanna Investment Group filed a federal complaint on June 29, 2026 against 100 unnamed defendants, alleging an insider-trading scheme that cost the firm more than $70 million. The losses stem from short-dated put options — contracts that profit when stock prices fall — purchased on Futu Holdings (FUTU) and UP Fintech Holding, parent company of Tiger Brokers (TIGR), ahead of a sweeping Chinese regulatory crackdown on offshore brokerages.

The case (docketed as 1:26-cv-05474-AS) centers on options activity between May 7 and May 21, 2026. According to Law360, the unnamed defendants purchased these put options through the very brokers those positions were designed to undermine. This matters because Susquehanna, as the counterparty market-maker (the firm that took the other side of the bet), ended up holding the losing end of the trade.

The timing pattern is central to the complaint. China's top securities regulator subsequently launched an enforcement action against offshore trading platforms, including Futu Securities, Tiger Brokers, and Longbridge, according to FA-Mag and The Straits Times. Both FUTU and TIGR are Chinese-founded, U.S.-listed brokerage platforms serving mainland Chinese investors who want access to Hong Kong and overseas markets — precisely the category the regulator targeted. When the crackdown became public, stock prices in both companies dropped sharply, making the pre-event puts highly profitable for whoever held them.

Susquehanna's theory is direct: someone with advance knowledge of the coming crackdown constructed a short-dated options position to profit from that information, executing through these brokers in a way that routed the risk directly onto Susquehanna as the options counterparty. The firm is pursuing civil recovery rather than waiting for a government enforcement referral.

The use of "John Doe" defendants is standard procedure when plaintiffs understand the shape of alleged misconduct but not yet the identities behind it. It freezes the statute of limitations clock while discovery — including subpoenas to brokers — is used to identify actual traders. Whether Futu or Tiger Brokers are named as relief defendants or simply subpoenaed as witnesses will carry weight: brokers hold the account-level data linking anonymous options activity to real people or entities.

The regulatory context forms the complaint's core narrative. China's securities watchdog has been progressively restricting cross-border retail brokerage, and an enforcement action against multiple licensed platforms simultaneously is a material event for those companies' share prices. Advance knowledge of such an action would be straightforward to monetize through near-term puts. The central legal challenge is whether Susquehanna can prove the defendants possessed material non-public information — information known to insiders but not yet public — rather than simply making a well-timed directional bet.

That distinction grows harder to prove in cross-border cases. Chinese regulatory deliberations are not subject to U.S. disclosure rules, and the information chain — from regulator to alleged traders — may run through jurisdictions where U.S. civil discovery has limited reach. Susquehanna's legal team will likely depend heavily on statistical improbability: the concentration of the options positioning, the choice of strike prices, expiry dates, and the timing window relative to the announcement are all factors courts have used to infer intent when a direct paper trail is absent.

For the options market-making community, this case underscores a structural vulnerability. Market-makers price options using publicly available information; when a counterparty holds non-public regulatory intelligence, the entire pricing model fails. Susquehanna absorbed more than $70 million of that failure.

The suit remains pending. No defendants have been identified, and none have responded to the allegations.