the bigger irony is that the SEC and FINRA were doing exactly what one of the hackers said they were doing, but got them - Ukranian and Russian trading firms - to settle over $10m just because they happened to know the other traders and would try to prove it in court that way if they didn't settle.
okay, knows prominent traders and hackers who trade US equities from Russian timezones, small world?
I don't see that implication in the article. I think you're referring to this part "your guys were detected. They were trading with very big money and there was a lot of fuss about them, about how it’s not the season and when it was the season they traded."
This excerpt most likely implies that the inside trades were for commodities (future contracts) and was sent to one of the relative people involved in the hack.
What would be irony (but of course is speculation) is if any of the brokerages that the hackers submitted trades thru did front-running (matching their trades at entry).
"I don't see that implication in the article." - quackerhacker
> Since 2010, the SEC’s Analysis and Detection Center has joined Wall Street’s self-regulator, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA), in monitoring the markets for signs of insider trading. Their algorithms are designed to pick up on stock prices fluctuating before major corporate announcements, indicating that those buying or selling have insider knowledge
> One defendant in the civil case, David Amaryan, whose company Copperstone Capital won an award for best Russian hedge fund in January 2015, claimed that one of his employees devised an algorithm to pick up early trades occurring on the market and mimic them. The logic being that the early trades were made on the basis of someone else’s insider information. ... Amaryan and his three companies agreed to pay $10 million to the SEC.
IANAL but this is an interesting legal precedent if true. Since this was an out of court settlement I assume there are no public records of the decision?
it wasn't out of court, this is the SEC's modus operandi
there's no precedent here, the government always does stuff like this
they got bullied in a civil case, the prosecutor caught them in a lie as they misjudged how the US government will nail them, and then they accepted a settlement deal
The SEC's problem is that their interpretation of laws are very nuanced and they need to avoid jury trials and appeals courts at all costs. Financial crimes are hard to prove and it is hard to determine if they are actually crimes. Yes the executive branch (SEC) says "acting like this is criminal wrongdoing so we will try you in civil court and also tell the Department of Justice", and this is reflected in the social contract that people imagine to be so, but the judicial branch and the constitution doesn't necessarily have a way to agree with the SEC. The jury in the lower trial courts are also hard to convince, because proving intent and proving which law was broken is extremely hard, all while going up against the wealthiest defendants on the planet.
The SEC does no-admit no-deny settlements because of this. The negotiation amounts are very informal between lawyers. So just kickback and relax, emphasis on kickback.
That Ukrainian voluntarily came to clear their name and got tripped up during cross examination. Stay opened up to a perjury charge or advance towards "settling" with the US just like their "perpetual settlement" with Ukranian authorities.
okay, knows prominent traders and hackers who trade US equities from Russian timezones, small world?
I don't like that story