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Insider Trader Arrested After He Googled 'Insider Trading,' Authorities Allege

Posted by BeauHD on from the breadcrumb-trail dept.

Spy Handler writes: Fei Yan, a research scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and 31-year-old Chinese citizen, was arrested by federal authorities on Wednesday on insider trading charges. Mr. Yan used Google to search for phrases such as "how sec detect unusual trade" and "insider trading with international account." He also allegedly read an article titled "Want to Commit Insider Trading? Here's How Not to Do It," according to the U.S. attorney prosecuting the case. Further reading: Associated Press, CNBC, USA Today

8 of 124 comments (clear)

  1. So... he was charged with reading? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Really? Waiting for the crime here....

    1. Re:So... he was charged with reading? by rtb61 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      The lawyer will have a field day with searches for insider trading. Ignorance of the law is not an excuse (then why isn't everyone treated as a lawyer) so he had information which he thought might have been insider trading, so they did searches on the internet to make sure the trades they did would not break the law and well, they got it wrong. What authorities are claiming is if you are doing legal searches to not break the law, then you are breaking the law because the law claims no citizen has ignorance of any law or it's details or it's legal interpretation which by law are of equal skill to judges of the highest appointments. To search the law is not breaking the regardless of the absurdity of 'ignorance of the law is not excuse' no matter how obscure the law.

      --
      Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
    2. Re:So... he was charged with reading? by Paradise+Pete · · Score: 5, Insightful

      So... he was charged with reading?

      If so then clearly you have nothing to worry about.

    3. Re: So... he was charged with reading? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      You were so right until about half way, then you turned into a shitpost.
      Authorities are claiming if you break the law, regardless of prior knowledge of the law, you broke the law. And that's it. You can try and argue about his intent here but if he had good intentions he would not have broke the law after reading about it. He had enough doubt about the legality of his actions that he searched it out online instead of getting real legal advice. Because he knew a real lawyer would call him out.

      This is why I said you shitpost. Because you brought in a secondary argument that has very little relevance and you resorted to basically rewording the same bad argument in a crazy run-on sentence followed by another confused sentence that says the same damn thing.

      Also, if you represent yourself you will be treated like a lawyer. You just won't know how to act like one. So you'll think they're treating you differently but in reality they would come down on an unprepared or incompetent lawyer just as bad.

    4. Re: So... he was charged with reading? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      The linked story said he made 120k from insider information he got from his Wife who is a lawyer working in a law firm.

      Quite clear cut. The searches he did is proof of intent. The search is not the crime.

  2. Re: What did he DO? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Well you know if you read the book and made a bomb and blew up the neighbors mailvox with it, you'd probably get in trouble for it. Just like how this guy looked up how to cover up insider trading and went ahead and made 2 insider trades that he profited from.

    I swear the /. commenters get dumber each day.

  3. Re:Why did Google turn him in? by dunkindave · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Why did Google report the searches to the SEC? Did he short their stock or something? ;-)

    Google didn't report it, they found that he did those searches after they were already looking at him, at least that is what the article implies since it is scant on details. My question though is how they know about the searches? Was it forensics on his computer, or did they get the search history from Google? I'm betting the former.

  4. Yeah by Ryanrule · · Score: 3, Insightful

    We need a new dilbert cartoon. The creator can fuck off though.