Judge may toss 4 guilty pleas in inside-trade case
Source: Associated Press
Judge may toss 4 guilty pleas in inside-trade case
| December 18, 2014 | Updated: December 18, 2014 4:20pm
NEW YORK (AP) A judge says he's leaning toward tossing out four guilty pleas in a New York insider-trading case, the latest fallout from a recent appeals court ruling criticizing prosecutors' tactics.
Federal Judge Andrew L. Carter Jr. notified attorneys of his plans Thursday. He says he thinks it's necessary to reject the pleas after a federal appeals court in Manhattan two weeks ago reversed two insider-trading convictions.
The appeals court ruling stemmed from a government crackdown on hedge fund insider trading.
The judge says the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals defined insider trading in a way that no longer supports the guilty pleas in a case involving five friends. The men were charged with conspiring in 2009 to earn hundreds of thousands of dollars by trading on a secret about IBM's planned acquisition of a software company.
Read more: http://www.chron.com/news/us/article/NY-judge-may-nix-4-guilty-pleas-in-an-insider-5966577.php
(Short article, no more at link.)
Adam051188
(711 posts)judge say's "you're not poor or a minority! what are you doing in a cage? someone made a mistake here!!"
Cryptoad
(8,254 posts)stealing from people who have less wealth than you,,,, you have nuttin to worry bout!
Adam051188
(711 posts)something about owing your soul to the company store or something seems appropriate here.
Jefferson23
(30,099 posts)By William K. Black
Bloomington, MN: December 10, 2014
We know that insider trading is an activity in which cheaters prosper. We know that Wall Street and the City of London are dominated by a fraudulent culture and we know that firm culture is set by the officers that control the firm. We know that the Department of Justice (DOJ) has allowed that to occur by refusing to prosecute any of the thousands of senior bank officers who became wealthy by leading the three most destructive financial fraud epidemics (appraisals, liars loans, and fraudulent sales of these fraudulently originated mortgages to the secondary market) in history. No one is surprised that Wall Streets elites have also engaged in widespread efforts to rig the stock markets so that they can shoot fish in the barrel through insider trading. Unlike the three fraud epidemics, one DOJ office, the Southern District of New York, has brought a series of criminal prosecutions against these officers.
Wall Streets court of appeals (the Second Circuit) has just issued an opinion not simply overturning guilty verdicts but making it impossible to retry the elite Wall Street defendants that grew wealthy through trading on insider information. Indeed, the opinion reads like a roadmap (or a script) that every corrupt Wall Street elite can follow to create a cynical system of cutouts (ala SAC) that will allow the most senior elites to profit by trading on insider information as a matter of routine with total impunity. The Second Circuit decision makes any moderately sophisticated insider trading scheme that uses cutouts to protect the elite traders a perfect crime. It is a perfect crime because (1) it is guaranteed to make the elite traders who trades on the basis of what he knows is secret, insider information wealthy absent successful prosecutions and (2) using the Second Circuits decision as a fraud roadmap, an elite trader can arrange the scheme with total impunity from the criminal laws. The Second Circuit ruling appears to make the financial version of dont ask; dont tell a complete defense to insider trading prosecutions. The Second Circuit does not simply make it harder to prosecute they make it impossible to prosecute sophisticated insider fraud schemes in which the elites use junior cutouts to create (totally implausible) deniability.
The New York Times article on the decision was entitled Two Insider Trading Convictions Are Overturned in Blow to Prosecutors. The title is partially correct. The real blows, however, were to investors, the already crippled integrity of Wall Street, and every honest trader on Wall Street who cannot possibly compete with his rivals who cheat through the sure thing of insider trading now that the Second Circuit has written an opinion explaining how to corrupt the entire system with impunity from the criminal laws.
Wall Streets most recent effort to rig the markets through insider trading is far larger and more audacious than any prior effort, including those by Michael Milken and Boesky. Wall Street elites sought to institutionalize the corruption of officers of a wide range of publicly traded corporations. The goal was to gain a corrupt advantage over honest investors in trillions of dollars in securities trades.
http://neweconomicperspectives.org/2014/12/second-circuit-makes-sophisticated-insider-trading-perfect-crime.html
blackspade
(10,056 posts)This kind of reversal only seems to happen when either Wall Street, Rethug politicians, and cops are involved.
The rest of us would just have to serve the time.