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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

#111

Post by chrisjharris »

ping_pong wrote: post #47

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 re…

I don't disagree with the general sentiment that the GFC was a total disaster, and I'd certainly not argue against the idea that a system had developed that had poor incentives, with sometimes greedy and unethical people working in it. What kind of concerns me, though, is the way that poor decision-making is conflated with breaking the law, or the belief that a terrible outcome ex-post necessarily implies illegality. I don't really see this logic being applied in other walks of life - in most jobs, if you are incompetent, or even incompetent and amoral, you wouldn't expect to be prosecuted.

For the most part I'd not see the GFC as a morality tale but rather a kind of weird emergent phenomena whereby one area of the economy became so big and complex that it was beyond's anyone's ability to manage, and the interactions of the millions of bit players in it - all of whom in their own way wanted to succeed and do well for themselves - led to this collectively disastrous outcome.

Which isn't to say that nothing illegal occurred - I'm not sure how you'd draw a boundary around the GFC but there were a number of securities fraud prosecutions in the years afterwards - but I think if you take the GFC and subtract all illegal behaviour, you'd still have the GFC.

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

#112

Post by whymauri »

nradov wrote: post #37
lizdax wrote: 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.

>Millions of investors do that with no problems.

Err, example please? I'm totally blanking here, not gonna lie.

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

#113

Post by refurb »

dheera wrote: post #70
refurb wrote: 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?

Lots of people who do insider trading think "if I don't do it then I won't get caught. I'll just have my [wife, dad, brother, cousin, mother-in-law] do the trade and the SEC will never figure it out".

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

#114

Post by ycombobreaker »

gnopgnip wrote: post #103
nzrf wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wish we could see something like that happen, but you are going to need some representatives to vote against their best interest. Kind of like why run off voting will never see the light of day.

The voted to pass the STOCK act, requiring disclosing these trades within ~30 days

30 days? That's some bullshit. Legislators trading based on closed-doors meetings related to "national security" (covid briefings) or even pending market-moving legislation should be on par with insider trading. It's not, and they will never collectively vote against their interests, to use their information for personal gain.

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

#115

Post by User23 »

lilyball wrote: post #63
DevKoala wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Nancy Pelosi’s story is her husband does the stock trading without her involvement (or even her knowledge prior to her regular reports to Congress about trading activity). If true (and assuming she’s not giving privileged info to her husband), that means no insider trading. Having said that, I really think Congresspeople should be prohibited from trading in individual stocks entirely, and restricted to just investing…

I’m under the impression that representatives are legally incapable of insider trading. Being in the congress privileges them to use the information they hear during speech and debate as they see fit.

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

#116

Post by Thorrez »

chews wrote: post #55
samfisher83 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand the plea deal, but why. I am assuming they had evidence she gave him the data. Why let her off?

if you don't personally profit from the bet... it's not one.

>Insider trading violations may also include "tipping" such information, securities trading by the person "tipped," and securities trading by those who misappropriate such information.

It sounds to me like even giving information to someone if you know that person will trade is illegal.

https://www.investor.gov/introduction-investing/investing-ba...

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

#117

Post by zeta0134 »

whymauri wrote: post #112
nradov wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

Err, wouldn't most of these millions be employees of the company, who receive stock options as a benefit or a bonus?

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

#118

Post by kbenson »

ping_pong wrote: post #47

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 re…

> one of the first signs of how Obama was going to betray the progressives and let Bush's status quo remain.

Was it Bush's status quo? That's not an insinuation or loaded question, I'm just wondering if Bush just perpetuated what came before (from Clinton, or Reagan, or Bush Sr.), and Obama continued in that tradition.

I assume there was more teeth to enforcement of this at some point in the past (I hope), but don't really know enough to know when that would have been.

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

#119

Post by ycombobreaker »

joshribakoff wrote: post #81
shawnz wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What nonpublic information do congresspeople have about how pandemics might impact the global economy?

Considering the pandemic became a pandemic in March and they sold stocks in February, your question reads as loaded.

The pandemic was definitely a "thing" through all of February, just binned as something that happens to Other People. February 24th was when US stock markets started to really react, and it was maybe 2 weeks until major US cities were making decisions like schooling from home.

There was plenty of opportunity through January and February for "prescient" trading decisions. The main decisions in question are those executed by US legislators immediately following a national security briefing. I'm not saying it's illegal, it's not; but they're assholes for selling after the briefing and still deliberately telegraphing otherwise.

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

#120

Post by birken »

camjohnson26 wrote: post #79
alexatalktome wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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 horrible trade. Am I missing something? Why did you say she made a killing?

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