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Husband of Amazon employee sentenced to prison for insider trading Amazon stock

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Re: Husband of Amazon employee sentenced to prison for insider trading Amazon stock

#32

How do they prove this? A lot of people play earnings. Amazon is not an obscure stock. In fact, making an earnings play on Amazon is probably one of the more reasonable safer things to do compared to what the world is up to now days.

Since they got a guilty plea out of him, I'm guessing they had strong enough proof to discourage him from going to trial where he could've risked up to 25 years in jail time if jury found the evidence credible.

If he had just stuck with stocks, I'm sure it would've been harder to prove. But with options and dates, timing of it... it's hard to get away.

Re: Husband of Amazon employee sentenced to prison for insider trading Amazon stock

#33
Does anyone honestly care about a million dollar trade by some employee's husband?

The bar for insider trading is hilariously low - this seems like a total waste of time and resources when you could be chasing whales like you should be.

Re: Husband of Amazon employee sentenced to prison for insider trading Amazon stock

#34
post #30
post #4

Would love to see the same penalties applied to members of congress who used info from private briefings at the start of the coronavirus pandemic to make stock trades. :|

Those private briefings likely did not contain nonpublic information, or especially nonpublic information about specific companies. The pandemic seemed obvious in February; I know dozens (myself included) who bought masks and supplies long before the run on stores, long before even the USG was lying to people telling them not to wear masks (to preserve the supply). The briefings were around then. Were I a gambling ma…

The stock market didn’t start to decline until Mid March so by definition the majority of “betting men” were still not sure the pandemic would have as far reaching of effects they did. It’s highly suspicious that US Congressmen did after getting briefs that were presumably not public information.

Re: Husband of Amazon employee sentenced to prison for insider trading Amazon stock

#35
post #2

>he obtained from his wife, an Amazon finance employee, to place trades in Amazon stock–making a profit of $1,428,264 >Bohra engaged in illegal insider trading in advance of 11 straight earnings announcements.” >He and his family members have paid $2,652,899 in disgorgement, interest and penalties. And 26 months in prison! This is why if you're going to do any kind of trading yourself -- never touch the company you w…

How did his wife get no prison time?

She only committed some light treason.

Re: Husband of Amazon employee sentenced to prison for insider trading Amazon stock

#36

How do they prove this? A lot of people play earnings. Amazon is not an obscure stock. In fact, making an earnings play on Amazon is probably one of the more reasonable safer things to do compared to what the world is up to now days.

They look for accounts that make consistently "lucky" large trades during blackout periods before earnings but at or just after the close of the quarter. Then they run the SSN/address/bank accounts/phone # associated with the trading account and compare to lists of insiders supplied by companies of who has access to their financial info.

I think they also have separate flags on insider's tax returns to look for any unusual capital gains from market transactions. It's not a trivial problem to make trades in an account completely unrelated to you and then get the illegit proceeds back into your control without tripping some flags.

Also, most of the volume in these stocks are huge algorithmic trades from institutional investors and funds. They also tend to move in herds based on when analysts release new reports or change ratings on the stock. Thus, those are pretty easy to filter out of a search. Unusual trades from individual brokerage accounts are going to stand-out. Especially if those accounts aren't making similar trades in other stocks.

When they get suspicious matches they run them down to see if there's anything there. I used to be an insider at a big tech company and there's quite a bit of scrutiny. You'd have to be really stupid to do that shit. Especially repeatedly with large amounts.

Re: Husband of Amazon employee sentenced to prison for insider trading Amazon stock

#37
post #2

>he obtained from his wife, an Amazon finance employee, to place trades in Amazon stock–making a profit of $1,428,264 >Bohra engaged in illegal insider trading in advance of 11 straight earnings announcements.” >He and his family members have paid $2,652,899 in disgorgement, interest and penalties. And 26 months in prison! This is why if you're going to do any kind of trading yourself -- never touch the company you w…

There's nothing illegal about trading your employer's stock if you don't have access to insider information. Millions of investors do that with no problems.

Re: Husband of Amazon employee sentenced to prison for insider trading Amazon stock

#39

Does anyone honestly care about a million dollar trade by some employee's husband? The bar for insider trading is hilariously low - this seems like a total waste of time and resources when you could be chasing whales like you should be.

It's interesting to think about the incentives. Look at the press they're getting. It's at the top of HN and will be fodder on all major news outlets. It was probably an easy slam dunk case for the prosectors.

Re: Husband of Amazon employee sentenced to prison for insider trading Amazon stock

#40
post #37
post #2

>he obtained from his wife, an Amazon finance employee, to place trades in Amazon stock–making a profit of $1,428,264 >Bohra engaged in illegal insider trading in advance of 11 straight earnings announcements.” >He and his family members have paid $2,652,899 in disgorgement, interest and penalties. And 26 months in prison! This is why if you're going to do any kind of trading yourself -- never touch the company you w…

There's nothing illegal about trading your employer's stock if you don't have access to insider information. Millions of investors do that with no problems.

Plenty of employers have company-wide blackouts for any stock trade in advance of earnings. So even if you don't have access to inside information you may be subject to company policies that prohibit it.
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