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Six charged in Silicon Valley insider trading ring

sec.gov

11–20 of 164 posts

Re: Six charged in Silicon Valley insider trading ring

#11
post #2

I'm not sure if this is standard for SEC press releases, but why do they include details such as, "he was a school teacher" and, "he owed gambling debts"? I've always suspected the SEC investigations regarding things like insider trading are typically the opposite of justice and designed to go after the smallest possible players while giving the illusion of enforcement. And these details in an allegedly serious inves…

> designed to go after the smallest possible players

SEC doesn't have infinite resources to go after every possible financial crime. They go after the ones that have the highest likelihood of successful prosecution. This is the case with most prosecutions like this.

Re: Six charged in Silicon Valley insider trading ring

#12
> Nathaniel Brown, [..] repeatedly tipped Infinera’s unannounced quarterly earnings and financial performance to his best friend, Benjamin Wylam

> Wylam, [..] and also tipped Naveen Sood

> Sood allegedly traded on this information and tipped his three friends Marcus Bannon, Matthew Rauch, and Naresh Ramaiya

It's less a ring and more a tree

One of the issues with leaking the info - you have no control over what is done with it and who acts on it, and it all potentially leads back to you

There was a case in Australia where a gov insider was leaking government data. He thought he had a partnership with a co-conspirator where they would make low-tens-of-thousands

He only found out after his arrest that his co-conspirator who was placing the trades was making millions - which is what got them noticed (he was one of the largest individual currency traders in the country - and never missed)

Re: Six charged in Silicon Valley insider trading ring

#13
For anything worth securing we have security engineered into it, like passwords, encryption what not. But for insider trading we are just supposed to assume that the players play right without any checks or balances? I don't think just the SEC is sufficient to prevent this.

Re: Six charged in Silicon Valley insider trading ring

#14
post #7

glad the sec spends all its time on 6 randos rather than meme stocks, scam chinese education companies, nft/crypto, scam spacs, tesla, etc… definitely have their priorities right

The stock market should be an honest unregulated casino. Don’t invest if you can’t afford to lose it all should be the name of the game.

Re: Six charged in Silicon Valley insider trading ring

#15

White collar crimes are barely punished - what a joke. Insider trading isn’t larceny, but for the sake of conversation let’s say it was - 1 million in insider trading would be like 4000 counts of grand larceny, each of which carry a max fine of 25K each. If people were actually fined 100 million for 1 million of insider trading I bet you it’d stop happening. For comparison $250 or more stolen is grand larceny and has…

>If people were actually fined 100 million for 1 million of insider trading I bet you it’d stop happening.

>For comparison $250 or more stolen is grand larceny and has a max fine of 25K and/or 5 years in state prison.

And as we all know, there's no more grand larceny

Re: Six charged in Silicon Valley insider trading ring

#16
post #2

I'm not sure if this is standard for SEC press releases, but why do they include details such as, "he was a school teacher" and, "he owed gambling debts"? I've always suspected the SEC investigations regarding things like insider trading are typically the opposite of justice and designed to go after the smallest possible players while giving the illusion of enforcement. And these details in an allegedly serious inves…

> designed to go after the smallest possible players SEC doesn't have infinite resources to go after every possible financial crime. They go after the ones that have the highest likelihood of successful prosecution. This is the case with most prosecutions like this.

> SEC doesn't have infinite resources to go after every possible financial crime.

So that makes token gestures acceptable?

Re: Six charged in Silicon Valley insider trading ring

#19

White collar crimes are barely punished - what a joke. Insider trading isn’t larceny, but for the sake of conversation let’s say it was - 1 million in insider trading would be like 4000 counts of grand larceny, each of which carry a max fine of 25K each. If people were actually fined 100 million for 1 million of insider trading I bet you it’d stop happening. For comparison $250 or more stolen is grand larceny and has…

>If people were actually fined 100 million for 1 million of insider trading I bet you it’d stop happening. >For comparison $250 or more stolen is grand larceny and has a max fine of 25K and/or 5 years in state prison. And as we all know, there's no more grand larceny

Larceny sentencing is also incredibly lenient in practice. This month an Erie County bookkeeper stole 90K from her clients and only had to pay 50K in restitution.

My general point is that white collar criminals are hardly punished in practice - not that insider trading should be treated as larceny. (Because as I pointed out the sentencing is generally light anyway)

Re: Six charged in Silicon Valley insider trading ring

#20
post #2

I'm not sure if this is standard for SEC press releases, but why do they include details such as, "he was a school teacher" and, "he owed gambling debts"? I've always suspected the SEC investigations regarding things like insider trading are typically the opposite of justice and designed to go after the smallest possible players while giving the illusion of enforcement. And these details in an allegedly serious inves…

> designed to go after the smallest possible players SEC doesn't have infinite resources to go after every possible financial crime. They go after the ones that have the highest likelihood of successful prosecution. This is the case with most prosecutions like this.

That's called "revenue policing" and the only people who like it are the people high status enough to not be subject to it.
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