Every Monday morning at Canoo’s Justin, Texas office, the company’s accounting leadership convened with the CFO for a weekly briefing. Jai Sondhi, 37, a licensed CPA and the company’s Senior Director of Internal Audit and Controls, attended those meetings as a matter of routine. On June 20, 2022, the briefing included something far from routine: the CFO disclosed that Canoo, Inc. was on the verge of announcing a major vehicle purchase agreement with Walmart. The CFO made clear — as he had before — that the information was material and nonpublic. Four days later, Sondhi began trading. On April 28, 2026, the Securities and Exchange Commission filed a settled enforcement action in the Northern District of Texas charging Sondhi with insider trading in Case No. 3:26-cv-01357, ordering him to pay $125,899.74 in combined disgorgement, interest, and civil penalties for trades that generated $54,965.23 in illicit gains from a company that no longer exists.
The Canoo-Walmart Negotiation Sondhi Heard About in a Staff Meeting
Canoo was an electric vehicle startup that had gone public in 2020 via SPAC merger and traded on Nasdaq under GOEV. The company had no significant revenue in 2020 or 2021, and in May 2022 warned investors of “substantial doubt” about its ability to continue as a going concern. A major purchase contract with a global retailer was an existential lifeline.
Canoo had been negotiating with Walmart since the fall of 2021, covering two parallel transactions: a purchase agreement for Walmart to buy at least 4,500 Canoo electric delivery vehicles over five years, with an option for up to 10,000 units, and a warrant agreement allowing Walmart to acquire a stake worth more than 20% of the company. By May 27, 2022, the parties had signed a Non-Binding Letter of Intent. By June 20, they were planning a joint announcement by July 1.
Sondhi had joined Canoo on February 7, 2022 and electronically acknowledged the company’s Insider Trading Policy the following day. That policy defined material information as anything that “could be expected to affect the market price” of Canoo’s securities and explicitly listed “strategic transactions,” “major contracts,” and “gain or loss of a significant customer” as examples. It also prohibited trading in call options outright. At the June 20 meeting, the CFO reminded everyone present, including Sondhi, that the Retailer transaction was material nonpublic information.
Options with Adjusted Expiration Dates and a Trading Pattern That Tracked the Announcement
Four days after the June 20 meeting, Sondhi purchased 2,500 shares of Canoo common stock and 58 call options expiring July 8, with strike prices of $2.50 to $3.50, on a day when the stock had closed at $2.03. On June 27, at the next Monday meeting, he learned that the announcement date had been pushed back from approximately July 1 to on or around July 11. His July 8 options were now set to expire worthless before the news broke. Undeterred, on June 29 Sondhi purchased 200 additional call options, this time expiring July 15 — several days past the revised announcement date — with a strike price of $2.50 on a day when the stock had opened and closed at $2.03. He also bought 50 more options expiring July 8 at the June 27 meeting, and added 4,500 more shares of common stock on July 5.
The trading pattern reflected direct knowledge of the announcement timeline. Every purchase was made while Sondhi possessed material nonpublic information about a transaction he knew company policy prohibited him from trading on. At the July 11 Monday meeting, the upcoming announcement was discussed again. Sondhi was present.
The Announcement, the Surge, and the Immediate Liquidation
At 6:00 a.m. on July 12, 2022, Canoo and Walmart announced the vehicle purchase agreement. Canoo’s stock soared 53% that day. Sondhi liquidated his July 15 call options immediately, realizing a profit of $43,271.56. He held his common stock position, recording an unrealized gain of $11,693.67. His combined total was $54,965.23.
The Walmart deal included a detail disclosed in a securities filing the following day: the agreement prohibited Canoo from doing any business with Amazon or its subsidiaries for the duration of the five-year pact. Canoo never fulfilled the delivery contract at scale. The company filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy on January 17, 2025, and Nasdaq filed a Form 25 on June 3, 2025, terminating the registration of its securities. The GOEV ticker, once briefly above $20 following the SPAC debut, no longer exists.
The Settlement Terms and Where Sondhi Works Now
The SEC’s complaint, filed the same day Sondhi’s settlement was entered, charges a single count of violating Section 10(b) of the Exchange Act and Rule 10b-5. Without admitting or denying the allegations, Sondhi consented to a permanent injunction from violating those provisions and agreed to pay disgorgement of $54,965.23, plus prejudgment interest of $15,969.28, and a civil penalty of $54,965.23 — the penalty matching his total illicit gain dollar for dollar. The combined payment totals $125,899.74.
Sondhi had worked at Deloitte from 2012 to 2017 before moving to the Howard Hughes Corporation, where he rose to VP of Internal Audit, then to AppSumo as Controller, before joining Canoo in February 2022. He left Canoo in December 2022. The SEC complaint describes him as currently employed as an independent consultant at a publicly traded company. Public records indicate he has served in an IT governance and compliance contracting role at Dollar Tree.
Conclusion
Sondhi’s illicit gain was $54,965.23. His civil penalty is the same amount. He attended the meeting where the CFO explicitly flagged the Walmart deal as material and nonpublic, then traded four days later, adjusted his options when the announcement date moved, and bought more shares in the week before the news broke. Canoo, which once promised to revolutionize last-mile delivery and briefly carried a market cap north of $3B, no longer trades on any exchange. The company Sondhi traded on the basis of is gone. The bill arrived anyway.
