Eleven Nvidia staffers and four associates stand accused of making $1.7m through insider trading, after the company told employees it had won the contract to supply Microsoft's Xbox games console with graphics chips.

Five staff face charges of criminal insider trading as well as civil fraud. The employees, mostly engineers, played the stock market after receiving a company-wide memo headed "X - it's ours" in March 2000 from CEO Jen-Hsun Huang, the Securities and Exchange Commission alleges.

All but two of the 15 are contesting the charges, the SEC says. Two have settled civil fraud charges by paying $70,000.

Robert Mitchell, head of the SEC's San Franciso enforcement unit, said the case "highlights the danger of executives' disseminating confidential information so broadly", Bloomberg reports. ®