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

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141–150 of 243 posts

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

#141
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…

If simply being husband of a woman who works for Amazon can help you acquire such information on which you can perform insider trading.

What stops from former workers at intelligence agencies from starting a hedge fund and employing all methods they learned while at work, to acquire such valuable information, trade based on that and offer others money management services?

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

#142
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…

He blatantly traded those 11 times during blackout periods. Companies make it very clear what these blackout periods are, so this was very stupid, as he was bound to get caught.

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

#143
post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They made a killing on Tesla calls for one, million dollar investment. https://newsthud.com/disclosure-fillings-reveal-pelosi-purch...

It looks like her TSLA stock is down from when she purchased it, because there is no corresponding sale and TSLA is trading for less than it was on 12/21/2020 (and has been for the last month... the disclosure period for trades). So instead of purchasing an index fund, which would be up 10% since 12/21/20, she purchased TSLA which is down ~5%. So this trade underperformed the market by 15%, which seems like it is a h…

They didn’t buy stock, they bought option calls which use leverage to profit massively of small movements in the ticker. They are incredibly risky, and Nancy’s husband bet between 500k and $1M on them, which means that if the trade had gone sour, they could have lost that immediately. That’s WallStreetBets levels of gambling, and a strange behavior for an otherwise safe trader.

Also, AFAIK there has been no update on whether those calls are still open or closed. They could have sold the covered calls already at a massive profit before the stock started to tank.

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

#144
post #71

Having worked at Amazon, I know the employees are fully aware of blackout periods. There is no way to claim plausible deniability there. It is easier for clueless household members to get a hold of the earnings statement or unknowingly trade AMZN during blackout periods, so in some cases I can see how an honest mistake could happen. However, this guy traded 1.5M 11 times during blackout periods ahead of earning state…

I think people simply don't appreciate that it's an easily caught crime. Most illegal things that one might do won't ever be caught, eg you break into someone's house and it would take the police to bother investigating and then put enough effort into that one case. Or to stay in white collar you might forget to report some income, how's the tax man to know unless you are already in focus? With insider trading the in…

And it's probably all automated.

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

#145
post #70
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have no doubt the SEC has a bunch of rules they use to flag suspicious transactions. The data analysis spits out a few names and they follow up in person to see who lawyers up and who cracks under pressure. It's also why Matt Levine's "rules of insider trading" includes "Don’t do it by buying short-dated out-of-the-money call options on merger targets". Certain transactions are suspicious as hell, especially when t…

I don't understand why "wife" has any legal bearing on this. What if it was a girlfriend? What if it was a friend? What if it was some random dude on reddit?

Because (excluding some explicit agreements where they're legal), you share finances with your wife, so if you get money, so does your wife. Possibly the same with your girlfriend. A friend or random dude on reddit would need a proven connection.

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

#146
post #70
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have no doubt the SEC has a bunch of rules they use to flag suspicious transactions. The data analysis spits out a few names and they follow up in person to see who lawyers up and who cracks under pressure. It's also why Matt Levine's "rules of insider trading" includes "Don’t do it by buying short-dated out-of-the-money call options on merger targets". Certain transactions are suspicious as hell, especially when t…

I don't understand why "wife" has any legal bearing on this. What if it was a girlfriend? What if it was a friend? What if it was some random dude on reddit?

It doesn't per se. The Insider Trading rules at my company speak about anyone living in your household as well as any close family members. Guess that's because there is reasonable assumption you'd be able to tell those people about internal knowledge.

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

#147
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…

If simply being husband of a woman who works for Amazon can help you acquire such information on which you can perform insider trading. What stops from former workers at intelligence agencies from starting a hedge fund and employing all methods they learned while at work, to acquire such valuable information, trade based on that and offer others money management services?

There are laws against corporate espionage. In terms of legal intelligence gathering, hedge funds already do that: https://newsroom.haas.berkeley.edu/how-hedge-funds-use-satel...

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

#148

This man sent to jail. How many politicians were sent to jail for covid insider trading? What about the billions Jeff Bezos fleeced in taxes? It's the rich man's world, where justice is only onto the poor.

The sad part is the stark difference in comments here and on that article [1]. People were skeptical that politicians could commit insider trading, but this couple of course deserves to be jailed…

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27406243

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

#149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Millions of investors do that with no problems. Err, example please? I'm totally blanking here, not gonna lie.

If you are an insider at a company you work at, they tell you and you have to adhere to additional rules and blackouts around announcement and earnings time. This is not common. In the story, the guy's wife worked in finance so had confidential info about earnings. The rank and file can trade whenever the hell we want with whatever stock we want, including our employer's. No one bats an eye.

Really? Even as a rank and file pleb I wasn’t allowed to trade except for about 2-3 weeks after earnings calls. I assumed that was the norm everywhere.

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

#150
post #86
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something being technically legal under some conditions doesn't automatically make it sound financial advice. There's a lot of companies out there. It's easy to pick one that definitely won't get you in to trouble instead of one that probably won't get you in to trouble.

If you work for a company that grants stock via shares or options, you're going to have to sell them at some point. At which point insider trading applies.

And your company will carefully tell you when the safe times to do so (usually a month or so after a quarterly result or some such announcement)
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