NEW YORK (Bloomberg) — US regulators sued a Russian trader for hijacking customer accounts at firms including E Trade Financial Corp. and TD Ameritrade Holding Corp. in 2006, part of a spate of break-ins at online brokerages.

Anatoly Russ, 25, stole passwords and made a series of transactions in the online accounts to buy options contracts from himself at inflated prices, the Securities and Exchange Commission said in the suit filed this week at federal court in Manhattan. The trades reaped $88,500, while saddling the firms with $340,000 in losses, the agency said.

The SEC has sued traders in India, Latvia, the British Virgin Islands and Florida since 2006 amid a crackdown on intrusions at online brokerages. The frauds typically combine high-tech hacking with an old-fashioned pump-and-dump scheme, inflating a security's price so traders can sell their own holdings at a profit. Russ sold his options for as much as 16 times what he paid, the SEC said.