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'Flash Crash' Trader Pleads Guilty, Facing Up To 30 Years In Prison (telegraph.co.uk)

Posted by EditorDavid on from the trading-futures dept.

Slashdot reader whoever57 writes; Navinder Sarao, the British trader who was accused of causing the "flash crash" in 2010 and was extradited to the U.S. this week has pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud and one count of spoofing. No details of the plea deal have been released, but it's believed that he's agreed to forfeit $13 million. Several years of jail time are also expected for Mr. Sarao.
From the Telegraph: Sarao, a 37-year-old working out of a modest suburban home in Hounslow in west London, allegedly made tens of millions of dollars with a computer program that could automatically manipulate prices... "Navinder Sarao abused sophisticated technology to make a quick profit, and jeopardised the integrity of US financial markets," said Assistant Attorney General Leslie Caldwell.
Sentencing guidelines suggest he'll spend at least six and a half years in prison, though he faced a maximum possible sentence of 30 years and still faces the possibility of $38 million in sanctions.

3 of 94 comments (clear)

  1. Integrity? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Navinder Sarao abused sophisticated technology to make a quick profit, and jeopardised the integrity of US financial markets,

    If one guy can cause this, it proves that the US financial markets *intrinsically* don't have much integrity.

    1. Re:Integrity? by Antique+Geekmeister · · Score: 4, Interesting

      > If one guy can cause this,

      There are whole companies dedicated to precisely this. It's called "high-frequency trading". I'm afraid what this gentleman failed to do was to "pay his cut" to the others in the business, and to make it too apparent that the "liquidity" of US markets is designed precisely to allow skimming money from the system through arbitrage.

  2. Re:But what is the crime? by clovis · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Also, one thing that media forgets to mention is that his activity was noticed before the flash crash and the exchanges told him to stop doing that. He continued his bogus trades, and he made the mistake of lying about his activities in emails with the exchanges.
    Nothing quite like documenting your crimes in email, is there? For some reason that sounds familiar, but it no longer seems important ...