[mrtksn]

Even if they had exactly the same outcome, one is theft the other is simply breaking the rules.

It's a bit like killing a person using a gun and killing a person as a result of driving like the rules don't apply to you. Once it is established that you did the act, the first one undoubtedly puts you in jail for a very long time no matter who you are and the second one may get you a fine and no jail time so that no harm is made to your career(like the Qatari royal who killed a pedestrian in London).

[blowfish721]

Even though what you are saying is techically correct and the reason why things work this way I wish they didn’t. I would argue that since there was intent with the action and there were victims it should be considered a criminal case rather than just breaking the rules. The victims in this case being everyone losing money during a scheme like this.

The likeness of this towards accidently killing someone while breaking the rules for driving falls apart using this reasoning as well since in that case the intent isn’t to kill anyone. In the scenerio comparing this however to bank robbery both cases have the intent to get money.

[mrtksn]

Actually you are right, they apparently did the spoofing with the intent to deceive specific traders so that the traders take action on this false information.

The car analogy would have been accurate if they did what they did without a specific target.

[mbesto]

> the other is simply breaking the rules.

Actually, this isn't necessarily true. Example regarding the college admission scandal that demonstrates that just because a dollar wasn't "stolen", something of value was.

The admissions slots were stolen from the colleges and resold on the black market. Which is a crime, for good reason. We don’t have to act like there wasn’t a legal, primary market for the admissions slots already.

I think the key is not to understand this as a crime against other applicants, or the public, or “fairness.” It’s a crime against the schools.

The back door—“institutional advancement,” i.e., giving colleges tons of money—is fine, not because it is “fair,” but because the owner of the asset gets to decide the conditions of its sale. (The fairness of the front door is debatable too, by the way.) The side door is wire fraud, not because it is “unfair”—Singer says here that it’s one-tenth the price of the back door, which kind of seems fairer—but because consultants and coaches are misappropriating the asset and selling it for their own benefit. The law doesn’t protect fairness; it protects property.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-03-13/you-ha...

https://twitter.com/jbarro/status/1105506383770894336

In the JPM fraud case specifically: (FTA)

Through these spoof orders, the traders intentionally sent false signals of supply or demand designed to deceive market participants into executing against other orders they wanted filled. According to the order, in many instances, JPM traders acted with the intent to manipulate market prices and ultimately did cause artificial prices.

Theft, by definition is when someone deprives the right of property from another person. Market participants should have been buying and selling at prices determined by the market. JPM manipulated that and created a profit as a result, thereby deprived other people from their profit.

So yes this is absolutely theft, just not the physical theft you're used to seeing when a robber walks into a bank and steals cash.

[clairity]

> "...The law doesn’t protect fairness; it protects property."

ah, the crux of the problem. we've veered much too far in this direction, and that's why we get absurdities like corporations stealing millions being punished much less severely than individuals stealing thousands. the law should primarily be about protecting people, not property (or corporations).

[toyg]

This is actually not the case in quite a few countries nowadays. It Italy there is now a crime of "murder by driving" that gets automatically charged if there are victims in a car accident.

Maybe it's time to make financial-crime penalties a bit harsher.

[konschubert]

Keep in mind that these categories are fuzzy. I Germany, a car driver was recently criminally convicted with murder after killing a pedestrian with his car.

The argument was that the way he was driving, we was accepting death. Like somebody shooting with a gun into a crowd.

https://www.lto.de/recht/nachrichten/n/lg-berlin-529ks6-20-k...

[genewitch]

A year or three ago a guy driving a pickup truck killed a pedestrian in Vernon parish, LA, made a Facebook post akin to "hope this buffs out [of my truck]" and other negative things, and wasn't charged with anything because killing pedestrians isn't illegal in Louisiana, technically. I forget if he had political ties, but I don't think he did.

[ClumsyPilot]

"It's a bit like killing a person using a gun and killing a person as a result of driving like the rules don't apply to you."

Can we call it "shooting like rules don't apply to you"?

"one is theft the other is simply breaking the rules"

The other is fraud, also a crime.

[nintendo1889]

Reminds me of my time at google.

There was a lesson in the new employee training on sexual harassment (for sales people, but still a general lesson) - don't bring a client to a strip club. A higher up sales manager had actually done this in the london office and it was posted on memegen, and mentioned that this was literally in the employee manual. Lesson: be a manager.

Lesson: be a bank. The more corrupt, the better (HSBC). Until another Hitler comes along and does something about it.