The researchers could have made a lot of money ($15-30M) off this information by shorting Volkswagen prior to the release of their reports, and it would've been

The researchers could have made a lot of money ($15-30M) off this information by shorting Volkswagen prior to the release of their reports, and it would've been perfectly legal. I speculated a bit about this notion -- specifically for VW and more generally as a startup / arbitrage opportunity: http://www.travisdeyle.com/musings/volkswagen.html http://www.travisdeyle.com/musings/volkswagen.html