I have to plead some ignorance on this one: I'm familiar with Australian securities law (at a very high level) but American securities law is of course quite something else.
Price-fixing I'm not sure applies here. It normally applies on the sell side but not the buy side. So if all the gas stations in the country said they would charge $6/gallon that would be price fixing. If all the consumers said they wouldn't pay more than $1.50/gallon then that's not price-fixing in the same sense.
But which side the angel investors are treated as is open to interpretation. It's also worth noting that this is investment rather than the sale of goods or services so price-fixing, depending on the law, may not even apply.
Collusion is a little more interesting. Australia has very strict laws here compared to the US (to both our benefit and detriment I suspect). I'm not even sure how to begin at unravelling such a thing.
It strikes me a little odd that it's the FBI spearheading this. I would've thought the FTC and/or the SEC would've been at the front of this. The FBI means the DoJ doesn't it? Or is the FBI the enforcement arm for these kinds of actions?
One disturbing possibility that would require FBI intervention: racketeering. Take a look at RICO:
"Securities fraud, also known as stock fraud and investment fraud, is a practice that induces investors to make purchase or sale decisions on the basis of false information, frequently resulting in losses, in violation of the securities laws."
Now that normally applies to companies but could it be applied to the enticement of other investors? If angel A puts in money at $3m pre-money while at the same time someone else is putting in money at $4m pre-money, enticed by angel A (without A disclosing his or her better deal), couldn't that qualify as securities fraud?
IANAL and it seems unlikely but when you get any securities malfeasance or the appearance thereof the whole thing can really spider in all sorts of unexpected directions.
> So if all the gas stations in the country said they would charge $6/gallon that would be price fixing. If all the consumers said they wouldn't pay more than $1.50/gallon then that's not price-fixing in the same sense.
That's probably true with those examples, but antitrust law tends to ignore large groups of individuals "colluding" in their personal retail purchases. Companies that together exert significant market power get more scrutiny, though; for example, if all the gas-station owners in Texas got together and said that they wouldn't pay more than $1.50/gallon wholesale for gas from refineries, that could be a Sherman Act violation. There have been a few cases about "group boycotts" as well; whereas consumers can organize boycotts for political or personal or whatever reasons, groups of companies organizing boycotts of other companies will attract investigators looking into whether the purpose of the boycott is market distortion.
I certainly don't claim the authority to determine if the Sherman Act applies in this case (or in fact any case).
To summarize my earlier post the most interesting thing about this is that the FBI is leading an investigation on this (if the story is true and indeed "Angelgate" is the subject of that investigation). The FBI having jurisdiction raises all sorts of interesting questions.
The lesser point was that the FBI investigates racketeering and the RICO statutes have very broad application as written whether or not they've been used that way to date.
Take the Sotheby's/Christie's price-fixing case. That was a civil matter was it not? It bears some similarity to this (an important difference being that the auction houses were providing a service whereas the angels are investing, which legally speaking isn't quite the same thing).
Price-fixing I'm not sure applies here. It normally applies on the sell side but not the buy side. So if all the gas stations in the country said they would charge $6/gallon that would be price fixing. If all the consumers said they wouldn't pay more than $1.50/gallon then that's not price-fixing in the same sense.
But which side the angel investors are treated as is open to interpretation. It's also worth noting that this is investment rather than the sale of goods or services so price-fixing, depending on the law, may not even apply.
Collusion is a little more interesting. Australia has very strict laws here compared to the US (to both our benefit and detriment I suspect). I'm not even sure how to begin at unravelling such a thing.
It strikes me a little odd that it's the FBI spearheading this. I would've thought the FTC and/or the SEC would've been at the front of this. The FBI means the DoJ doesn't it? Or is the FBI the enforcement arm for these kinds of actions?
One disturbing possibility that would require FBI intervention: racketeering. Take a look at RICO:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racketeer_Influenced_and_Corrup...
Trigger offences include securities fraud:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Securities_fraud
"Securities fraud, also known as stock fraud and investment fraud, is a practice that induces investors to make purchase or sale decisions on the basis of false information, frequently resulting in losses, in violation of the securities laws."
Now that normally applies to companies but could it be applied to the enticement of other investors? If angel A puts in money at $3m pre-money while at the same time someone else is putting in money at $4m pre-money, enticed by angel A (without A disclosing his or her better deal), couldn't that qualify as securities fraud?
IANAL and it seems unlikely but when you get any securities malfeasance or the appearance thereof the whole thing can really spider in all sorts of unexpected directions.