There was a similar story a couple months ago about the insider who rigged the lottery. I'm sorry, I don't recall the source.
In any case, the ones who get caught are done in by carelessness, and over-confidence. You have to wonder how many are not getting caught if they can manage these two faults.
"You have to wonder how many are not getting caught if they can manage these two faults."
I wonder the same about leaks like the Snowden leaks. If Snowden could do this how many other people get access to the same data and use it for their own purposes be it financial, political or both ? My guess is a lot.
> Hanssen [...] is serving his sentence at the ADX Florence, a federal supermax prison near Florence, Colorado in solitary confinement for twenty-three hours a day.
The guy made a deal to avoid the death penalty, but from what I've read about solitary confinement this can't be much better.
>U.S. mole hunters investigated 90 employees at WTC for almost a year and came up with ten suspects, although the lead investigator noted that "there are so many problem personalities that no one stands out"
The story of Michael Larson involves a smaller payout from a 1980s game show, but it's interesting because it's more due to a hacker mindset than fraud (though he was involved in the latter later in life) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Larson
A judge in NH recently ruled that the winner of the lottery doesn't need to come forward and be a part of lottery press and therefore their name does not need to be released. The reasoning is good on the surface that people who just won a life changing amount of money shouldn't have to have their personal details flashed on the news.
However, it seems like being named in public is the best way to prevent fraud. Many of these scams are through second counsins' friends and weird sources. Now an insider could just go through their best friend and no one would ever be able to connect the dots.
That's not what the case in NH was about. It was already possible to collect the winnings through an anonymous trust, but the winner didn't know about that before signing their own name on the ticket. The ruling let the winner do what they could have done without issue, had they known about it sooner.
Depends which kinds of fraud you care about. Being named in public as a lottery winner is a pretty good way of making someone the target of every fraudster, con artist and swindler in the area.
The fact that a member of a crime family felt comfortable enough to appear on a McDonald's commercial as a winner seems to call into question the effectiveness of this strategy.
Except that major jackpots are chosen using physical apparatus and much harder to hack. There are multiple sets of balls, chosen randomly, the balls are regularly weighed to the thousandth of an ounce (gram? Can't remember), the balls are never handled alone and the drawings are supervised by independent auditors.
I'm not sure if I'm for or against winners staying anonymous. If they would require public identification, winners could simply change their name to smith. I'd happily change my name for a hundred million dollars.
The people doing the rigging were looking to hit targets and get bigger bonuses. There was pressure up and down, depending on personal and corporate positions. There were also issues in terms of perceived stability of the reporting bank - didn't want to quote too high a number or else you looked injured and could be dead within days or weeks.
While the LIBOR (and similar) rate had a huge impact given how many products referenced it, the direct trading is rather smaller and the direct impact of misquoting was small. Rates were moved hundredths to at most tenths of a percent.
Using the billions figure is hyperbolic and doesn't reflect what the people involved did or were trying to do.
If you want to fix problems in important markets, just like in code, you need a clear, detailed, and nuanced understanding of what happened and the motivations of those involved.
And when they were caught... you guessed it, none of those criminals went to jail or suffered any kind of personal responsibilities. The institutions received fines worth a fraction of their profits. Zero incenctives not to do this again. And the world keeps spinning, and we keep getting fucked.
"On 27 July 2012, the Financial Times published an article by a former trader which stated that Libor manipulation had been common since at least 1991."
In other words, this came to light under the previous US POTUS and - much like the crash of 2007 / 2008 - __nothing__ happened. It's amazing how much power the MSM has over the narrative(s) and public perception.
Those companies are international - where is far less important than who. The Obama admin's decision to (effectively) pardon Wall Street (for crashing - and nearly crushing - the __world__ economy) looks even worse. Yeah. I get it. No one likes to hear that their liberal hero BHO screwed them over, in favor of WS, The City, etc.
The point being these financial companies get to operate without fear; without penalty. Which was the nature of the comment that comment was added to.
In any case, the ones who get caught are done in by carelessness, and over-confidence. You have to wonder how many are not getting caught if they can manage these two faults.