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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

#41

Post by catillac »

lucasyvas wrote: post #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.

About one person, probably not. I think this one hits close to home for a lot of us that have stock in many of these large companies from being employees. Granted, this situation seems particularly egregious, trading off of insider financial information not even available to most employees, but still.

I believe the intent was to provide a chilling effect on regular people at FAMGAN-type companies who may have some access to insider information and were perhaps toying with the prospect of acting on it.

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

#42

Post by LanceH »

ApolloRising wrote: post #14
runawaybottle wrote: post #6

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.

Hard to guess right 11 times in a row.

He needed Clinton's lawyer.

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

#43

Post by brewdad »

sneak wrote: post #30
0_____0 wrote: 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…

There absolutely was nonpublic information. Probably not about individual companies but certainly about the degree of the looming impact to the global economy.

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

#44

Post by russian-hacker »

sneak wrote: post #30
0_____0 wrote: 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…

How do Nancy Pelosi's boots taste?

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

#45

Post by catillac »

agotterer wrote: post #38

How does this even end up on the SEC or IRS radar? $1.4M seems like a blip in the grand scheme of things.

I don’t know about IRS but SEC enforcement actions are largely driven by complaints from regular people. Perhaps the stock broker got suspicious and acted per their ethical duties, or perhaps one of them wasn’t as tight lipped as they would have needed to be.

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

#46

Post by ALittleLight »

smnrchrds wrote: post #25
ALittleLight wrote: post #8

Gained 1.5 million. Lost 2.6 plus two years in prison and his wife's job. Not a great trade.

If you ignore all the ethical aspects of it and look at it as a purely economic transaction, whether it was a great trade or not depends on the odds of getting caught, not just the punishment if you get caught.

That's true. I wonder what the odds of getting caught are. I wonder how the odds would change if you had someone unconnected to you who placed the trades and shared the profits.

As I write this I can imagine a cryptocurrency marketplace for insider information. The insider asserts some fact about a company and stakes an amount in crypto. Buyers see the potential - e.g. "Amazon insider staking 1 million for X% return" and can choose to take on the deal or not. If the buyer does take on the deal they see the information and if the information is borne out then the buyer must return the insider's investment plus X%. Otherwise the buyer gets the insider's stake.

There's a lot of rough edges and potential for abuse, but I can imagine something like this making it hard or impossible to prove insider trading.

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

#47

Post by ping_pong »

I love how no one on Wall Street was convicted of anything criminal even though they almost destroyed the entire global financial system. There was even text messages of fraud being committed and nothing happened. Not even clawbacks or fines or anything. The government just let them go. That was so disappointing, and one of the first signs of how Obama was going to betray the progressives and let Bush's status quo remain. It was pretty sickening to watch the entire thing play out and then end with nothing.

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

#48

Post by leephillips »

0_____0 wrote: 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. :|

Before passage of the STOCK act in 2012, there was disagreement whether members of congress could be prosecuted for insider trading.

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

#49

Post by crispyambulance »

lucasyvas wrote: post #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.

> ...this seems like a total waste of time and resources when you could be chasing whales like you should be.

That's what the Bohra's thought!

It's what a lot of insider trading criminals think. They think the SEC has "thresholds" and only go after "whales". They don't, they look for patterns and go for it. Low hanging fruit is irresistible for them, it's not a "waste of resources."

What's ironic is the that typical insider trading criminals are well-compensated exec level staff. These people pull in Nx100K total comp. The thing is, at those level their peers have wildly variable net-worth. Some come from dynastic wealth, others clawed their way up from ordinary backgrounds. Tragically the ones who clawed their way up tend to suffer from envy when they look at the toys some of their old-money peers have-- they end up looking for "shortcuts" to keep up with the Joneses. Envy can lead to ugly things.

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

#50

Post by alexatalktome »

DevKoala wrote: post #27
0_____0 wrote: 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. :|

This 100%. For example, Nancy Pelosi should be named the Wolf of Wall Street. Look at that amazing trade she made on cyber security companies right before the hacks on the government were announced. Source: https://housestockwatcher.com/summary_by_rep/Hon.%20Nancy%20...

Can you name the companies and a source? I recall a few weeks ago there was a HN post about congressman but I didn’t recall seeing cyber security in the list.
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