8 ms·

SEC Director of Enforcement resigns after a few days on the job

128 points by balozi 5y ago

vmception 5y ago
mods are asleep! post pictures of cats!
vmception 5y ago
Niiiice I love a power vacuum and distraction at the SEC! Good opportunity to install a crypto-sympathizer and drop all the ICO cases. Gary Gensler would totally be down to get Brian Brooks in that role! The lawyer that was doing the first Bitcoin ETF applications for Gemini back in 2018 works at the SEC now too, I think in or near the division of enforcement!
codeulike 5y ago
DC Judge Royce Lamberth on April 26 set in motion a sanctions probe affecting Alex Oh, who'd joined the SEC as enforcement chief from the law firm Paul Weiss. Lambeth's order: https://courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.14559/gov.uscourts.dcd.14559.799.0.pdf https://courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.14559/gov.u... Oh today announced her resignation https://twitter.com/MikeScarcella/status/1387524397993545728 https://twitter.com/MikeScarcella/status/1387524397993545728 edit: I dont understand it either, heres a longer article about it https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/28/business/sec-enforcement-director-steps-down.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/28/business/sec-enforcement-...
- stefan_ 5y ago
  I need a decoder ring for this. This is a court order in some case v Exxon. Whats it got to do with FISA or Clinton?
  - dboreham 5y ago
    Nothing?
  - nickodell 5y ago
    Alex Oh worked for a law firm which represents Exxon. That law firm was accused of obstructing a deposition to avoid providing answers to the other side. [1] >ORDERS defense counsel to show cause by May 14, 2021 why sanctions should not be imposed under Rule 11 (b)(3) for alleging that plaintiffs' counsel was agitated, disrespectful, and unhinged during the deposition despite a lack of record evidence supporting those allegations. See Mem. Op. 29-31. >ORDERS defendants to serve a copy of this order on Ms. Oh. Was Alex Oh specifically responsible for this conduct? The order doesn't say. What does this have to do with Clinton? Nothing, except in a six-degrees-of-kevin-bacon sense. [1]: https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.14559/gov.uscourts.dcd.14559.799.0.pdf https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.14559/g...
    - ipaddr 5y ago
      He was senior enough to share the blame because was more likely aware if not involved.
  - the_optimist 5y ago
    Melissa Hodgman is Peter Strozk's wife. Peter was (is??) the FBI-counter-intel agent notorious for his work on "Crossfire Hurricane," the Hillary Clinton email server, the "lying to the FBI" charges against Michael Flynn, and the questionable representations made repeatedly by the FBI to the FISA court.
    - cyanydeez 5y ago
      by "notorious" you mean in the far right muck making mschine
      - dionian 5y ago
        sounds like a purely left-wing characterization of the facts
        sthnblllII 5y ago
        No, the far-left actually distrusts the FBI and intelligence agencies (it always has since at least Vietnam) and called out Russiagate as a mostly fabricated distraction from the evils of neoliberalism and globalization. It's the centrists who promote hate against Russia and China. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=WRoTGlQ4JMA https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=WRoTGlQ4JMA
    - cowpig 5y ago
      jeez.. apparently this is all true: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Strzok https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Strzok I am surprised that someone married to this person is acting as a high-ranking official in the executive branch of government controlled by the Democratic party
      - DevKoala 5y ago
        The surprises never end.
      - newacct583 5y ago
        Hodgman has been at the SEC for years, that's not a partisan position. And she held the same office under Trump.
  - unyttigfjelltol 5y ago
    The judge wrote an explanation but hasn't released it yet, because it's under seal. >ORDERS the parties to meet and confer and to file a joint report by May 6, 2021, informing the Court whether they object to any portion of the Memorandum Opinion being unsealed. ...
- huac 5y ago
  The case in question is an important one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doe_v._Exxon_Mobil_Corp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doe_v._Exxon_Mobil_Corp. Edit - link that works: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doe_v._Exxon_Mobil_Corp%2E https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doe_v._Exxon_Mobil_Corp%2E (thanks layer8)
  - __john 5y ago
    For some reason your Wikipedia link doesn't include the period at the end. > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doe_v._Exxon_Mobil_Corp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doe_v._Exxon_Mobil_Corp. edit: maybe a bug with the way HN handles the text to HTML.
    - lurkerasdfh8 5y ago
      i think microsoft started the trend of link-ifying URLs in outlook text emails reader and excluding .,)] after that started, every PM/exec just want it to work like it works everywhere-else. Everywhere-else being their corporate email client, and then it comes full circle and indeed does work like that everywhere.
      - layer8 5y ago
        Let’s see if this works: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doe_v._Exxon_Mobil_Corp%2E https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doe_v._Exxon_Mobil_Corp%2E Yes! You can work around the issue by encoding the trailing dot as %2E. And in Outlook you can enclose URLs in <…> delimiters.
      - dang 5y ago
        HN's primitive URL parsing definitely doesn't derive from Microsoft :) I did some work on it last year to take care of the worst omissions, and angle brackets should also now work to demark tricky URLs but there are still some edge cases. For example, <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doe_v._Exxon_Mobil_Corp. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doe_v._Exxon_Mobil_Corp.> should work, but doesn't (yet!) Edit: now it does. So should these: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sagittarius_A* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sagittarius_A*> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Weinberg#"Don't_trust_anyone_over_30" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Weinberg#"Don't_trust_any...> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Northern_Railway_(U.S.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Northern_Railway_(U.S.)> <https://developer.android.com/reference/android/location/Location#isFromMockProvider() https://developer.android.com/reference/android/location/Loc...> They are all cases of URLs that don't get picked up correctly by HN's current parser. At least now they work with angle brackets.
- tmaly 5y ago
  https://finance.yahoo.com/news/sec-enforcement-chief-alex-oh-210521655.html https://finance.yahoo.com/news/sec-enforcement-chief-alex-oh... "Before joining the SEC, Oh was a partner at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, where her corporate clients included Exxon Mobil Corp. In that role she was defending the oil company against two-decade-old allegations that it supported killings and tortures in Indonesia, court documents show."
andrewmcwatters 5y ago
Well, it's not like the SEC does anything meaningful these days anyway. Along with the FCC and FTC. In fact, I can't think of anything meaningful any of these agencies have done in recent history. Edit: It's interesting this post in particular was so divisive. We don't have a well functioning market, my phone is effectively worthless these days, and monopoly and over-regulated corporate practices effect my day-to-day life in the most mundane of ways. But apparently that's not a good opinion here to share. OK.
- scottmcleod 5y ago
  This is just not true. From firsthand experience and just any basic research.
  - Dopameaner 5y ago
    From a complete layman, Do you have any good data points to start research for this topic? My initial thoughts are scanning through news websites.
    - roughly 5y ago
      At a first pass, https://www.sec.gov/news/pressreleases https://www.sec.gov/news/pressreleases lists at least 8 enforcement actions in the month of April alone, along with a few other things.
- EGreg 5y ago
  The JOBS act? Crowdfunding? Test the waters most recently? Expanding who is an accredited investor? No-action letters to various cryptos? The list goes on...
- cookguyruffles 5y ago
  If you don't think the SEC are keeping busy you probably haven't been looking very hard. Ignoring enforcement which someone else mentioned, they are the only thing stopping exchanges charging every human on the planet $1000 each time they blink. It's a full time job in itself, and the SEC can be quite heavy-handed in increasing competitiveness despite a continuous onslaught of lawsuits from incumbents every time they sneeze. Recent examples include approving an IEX order type that fundamentally undermines a traditional business model for the exchanges (but is beneficial to just about everybody else), and the new market data initiative approved last year which should greatly reduce extortionate rentseeking on the part of the exchanges, while forcing them to share data with the public (depth of book) that previously cost 6 figures per exchange per user annually. Both of these generated immediate lawsuits from NYSE
mvzvm 5y ago
I wonder what they saw...
ffggvv 5y ago
they havent done their job at all. from tesla to spacs to crypto to GME.
- sokoloff 5y ago
  What does/should the SEC have to do with crypto (in general; they obviously have some oversight for COIN)?
  - jonathankoren 5y ago
    Crypto is a security. I’m under the impression that crypto is just a massive fraud, market manipulation, including insider trading. The whole MtGox debacle[0] cemented then idea in my mind that crypto is shady AF. [0] Lest we forget, the original largest crypto exchange was named “Magic: The Gathering Online eXchange”.
    - rawtxapp 5y ago
      SEC themselves ruled they don't consider BTC and ETH a security and they are currently going after XRP because they consider that to be a security. MtGox has been dead in over 7 years, I'm not sure how that's relevant today when we have well regulated exchanges.
      - cowpig 5y ago
        > we have well regulated exchanges Are you referring to crypto exchanges as "well regulated"? If so, can you give an example of one that fulfills that description?
        rawtxapp 5y ago
        Coinbase [1], Gemini [2], Kraken [3]. The ones that don't abide by the rules get shut down very quickly [4][5]. 1: https://www.coinbase.com/legal/faq https://www.coinbase.com/legal/faq 2: https://support.gemini.com/hc/en-us/articles/204734485-Is-Gemini-licensed-and-or-regulated- https://support.gemini.com/hc/en-us/articles/204734485-Is-Ge... 3: https://support.kraken.com/hc/en-us/articles/360031282351-Is-Kraken-licensed-or-regulated- https://support.kraken.com/hc/en-us/articles/360031282351-Is... 4: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-03-12/crypto-exchange-binance-investigated-by-u-s-over-who-s-trading https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-03-12/crypto-ex... 5: https://www.theblockcrypto.com/post/84020/binance-blocking-us-users-exchange-email-2 https://www.theblockcrypto.com/post/84020/binance-blocking-u...
temp667 5y ago
If they would increase penalities and enforcement around failures to deliver we'd know they actually cared about a functioning market. Too many attorney's, not enough CPA's / Economists or investors in their staff.
- gruez 5y ago
  I see r/superstonk is leaking.
  - temp667 5y ago
    Which I've never heard of. The idea you can sell something you don't own AND then fail to deliver it, is ridiculous. The fact that only bigger players can get away with this largely penalty free is even sillier and increases market fragility.
- datavirtue 5y ago
  They operate within the constraints of thier authority and resources. Complain to you congress person and or senator.
mvzvm 5y ago
More context here: https://www.wsj.com/articles/new-sec-enforcement-director-alex-oh-resigns-agency-says-11619644474 https://www.wsj.com/articles/new-sec-enforcement-director-al...
- carbocation 5y ago
  That is helpful! Thank you. > Ms. Oh decided to resign after a U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth, in an order issued Monday, questioned her conduct during a deposition in a case filed against Exxon Mobil Corp. Ms. Oh’s law firm, Paul Weiss, represents Exxon.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

128 points by balozi 5y ago

mods are asleep! post pictures of cats!

Niiiice I love a power vacuum and distraction at the SEC! Good opportunity to install a crypto-sympathizer and drop all the ICO cases. Gary Gensler would totally be down to get Brian Brooks in that role! The lawyer that was doing the first Bitcoin ETF applications for Gemini back in 2018 works at the SEC now too, I think in or near the division of enforcement!

codeulike 5y ago

DC Judge Royce Lamberth on April 26 set in motion a sanctions probe affecting Alex Oh, who'd joined the SEC as enforcement chief from the law firm Paul Weiss. Lambeth's order: https://courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.14559/gov.uscourts.dcd.14559.799.0.pdf https://courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.14559/gov.u... Oh today announced her resignation https://twitter.com/MikeScarcella/status/1387524397993545728 https://twitter.com/MikeScarcella/status/1387524397993545728 edit: I dont understand it either, heres a longer article about it https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/28/business/sec-enforcement-director-steps-down.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/28/business/sec-enforcement-...

stefan_ 5y ago
I need a decoder ring for this. This is a court order in some case v Exxon. Whats it got to do with FISA or Clinton?
- dboreham 5y ago
  Nothing?
- nickodell 5y ago
  Alex Oh worked for a law firm which represents Exxon. That law firm was accused of obstructing a deposition to avoid providing answers to the other side. [1] >ORDERS defense counsel to show cause by May 14, 2021 why sanctions should not be imposed under Rule 11 (b)(3) for alleging that plaintiffs' counsel was agitated, disrespectful, and unhinged during the deposition despite a lack of record evidence supporting those allegations. See Mem. Op. 29-31. >ORDERS defendants to serve a copy of this order on Ms. Oh. Was Alex Oh specifically responsible for this conduct? The order doesn't say. What does this have to do with Clinton? Nothing, except in a six-degrees-of-kevin-bacon sense. [1]: https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.14559/gov.uscourts.dcd.14559.799.0.pdf https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.14559/g...
  - ipaddr 5y ago
    He was senior enough to share the blame because was more likely aware if not involved.
- the_optimist 5y ago
  Melissa Hodgman is Peter Strozk's wife. Peter was (is??) the FBI-counter-intel agent notorious for his work on "Crossfire Hurricane," the Hillary Clinton email server, the "lying to the FBI" charges against Michael Flynn, and the questionable representations made repeatedly by the FBI to the FISA court.
  - cyanydeez 5y ago
    by "notorious" you mean in the far right muck making mschine
    - dionian 5y ago
      sounds like a purely left-wing characterization of the facts
      - sthnblllII 5y ago
        No, the far-left actually distrusts the FBI and intelligence agencies (it always has since at least Vietnam) and called out Russiagate as a mostly fabricated distraction from the evils of neoliberalism and globalization. It's the centrists who promote hate against Russia and China. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=WRoTGlQ4JMA https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=WRoTGlQ4JMA
  - cowpig 5y ago
    jeez.. apparently this is all true: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Strzok https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Strzok I am surprised that someone married to this person is acting as a high-ranking official in the executive branch of government controlled by the Democratic party
    - DevKoala 5y ago
      The surprises never end.
    - newacct583 5y ago
      Hodgman has been at the SEC for years, that's not a partisan position. And she held the same office under Trump.
- unyttigfjelltol 5y ago
  The judge wrote an explanation but hasn't released it yet, because it's under seal. >ORDERS the parties to meet and confer and to file a joint report by May 6, 2021, informing the Court whether they object to any portion of the Memorandum Opinion being unsealed. ...
huac 5y ago
The case in question is an important one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doe_v._Exxon_Mobil_Corp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doe_v._Exxon_Mobil_Corp. Edit - link that works: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doe_v._Exxon_Mobil_Corp%2E https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doe_v._Exxon_Mobil_Corp%2E (thanks layer8)
- __john 5y ago
  For some reason your Wikipedia link doesn't include the period at the end. > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doe_v._Exxon_Mobil_Corp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doe_v._Exxon_Mobil_Corp. edit: maybe a bug with the way HN handles the text to HTML.
  - lurkerasdfh8 5y ago
    i think microsoft started the trend of link-ifying URLs in outlook text emails reader and excluding .,)] after that started, every PM/exec just want it to work like it works everywhere-else. Everywhere-else being their corporate email client, and then it comes full circle and indeed does work like that everywhere.
    - layer8 5y ago
      Let’s see if this works: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doe_v._Exxon_Mobil_Corp%2E https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doe_v._Exxon_Mobil_Corp%2E Yes! You can work around the issue by encoding the trailing dot as %2E. And in Outlook you can enclose URLs in <…> delimiters.
    - dang 5y ago
      HN's primitive URL parsing definitely doesn't derive from Microsoft :) I did some work on it last year to take care of the worst omissions, and angle brackets should also now work to demark tricky URLs but there are still some edge cases. For example, <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doe_v._Exxon_Mobil_Corp. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doe_v._Exxon_Mobil_Corp.> should work, but doesn't (yet!) Edit: now it does. So should these: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sagittarius_A* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sagittarius_A*> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Weinberg#"Don't_trust_anyone_over_30" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Weinberg#"Don't_trust_any...> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Northern_Railway_(U.S.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Northern_Railway_(U.S.)> <https://developer.android.com/reference/android/location/Location#isFromMockProvider() https://developer.android.com/reference/android/location/Loc...> They are all cases of URLs that don't get picked up correctly by HN's current parser. At least now they work with angle brackets.
tmaly 5y ago
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/sec-enforcement-chief-alex-oh-210521655.html https://finance.yahoo.com/news/sec-enforcement-chief-alex-oh... "Before joining the SEC, Oh was a partner at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, where her corporate clients included Exxon Mobil Corp. In that role she was defending the oil company against two-decade-old allegations that it supported killings and tortures in Indonesia, court documents show."

andrewmcwatters 5y ago

Well, it's not like the SEC does anything meaningful these days anyway. Along with the FCC and FTC. In fact, I can't think of anything meaningful any of these agencies have done in recent history. Edit: It's interesting this post in particular was so divisive. We don't have a well functioning market, my phone is effectively worthless these days, and monopoly and over-regulated corporate practices effect my day-to-day life in the most mundane of ways. But apparently that's not a good opinion here to share. OK.

scottmcleod 5y ago
This is just not true. From firsthand experience and just any basic research.
- Dopameaner 5y ago
  From a complete layman, Do you have any good data points to start research for this topic? My initial thoughts are scanning through news websites.
  - roughly 5y ago
    At a first pass, https://www.sec.gov/news/pressreleases https://www.sec.gov/news/pressreleases lists at least 8 enforcement actions in the month of April alone, along with a few other things.
EGreg 5y ago
The JOBS act? Crowdfunding? Test the waters most recently? Expanding who is an accredited investor? No-action letters to various cryptos? The list goes on...
cookguyruffles 5y ago
If you don't think the SEC are keeping busy you probably haven't been looking very hard. Ignoring enforcement which someone else mentioned, they are the only thing stopping exchanges charging every human on the planet $1000 each time they blink. It's a full time job in itself, and the SEC can be quite heavy-handed in increasing competitiveness despite a continuous onslaught of lawsuits from incumbents every time they sneeze. Recent examples include approving an IEX order type that fundamentally undermines a traditional business model for the exchanges (but is beneficial to just about everybody else), and the new market data initiative approved last year which should greatly reduce extortionate rentseeking on the part of the exchanges, while forcing them to share data with the public (depth of book) that previously cost 6 figures per exchange per user annually. Both of these generated immediate lawsuits from NYSE

mvzvm 5y ago

I wonder what they saw...

ffggvv 5y ago

they havent done their job at all. from tesla to spacs to crypto to GME.

sokoloff 5y ago
What does/should the SEC have to do with crypto (in general; they obviously have some oversight for COIN)?
- jonathankoren 5y ago
  Crypto is a security. I’m under the impression that crypto is just a massive fraud, market manipulation, including insider trading. The whole MtGox debacle[0] cemented then idea in my mind that crypto is shady AF. [0] Lest we forget, the original largest crypto exchange was named “Magic: The Gathering Online eXchange”.
  - rawtxapp 5y ago
    SEC themselves ruled they don't consider BTC and ETH a security and they are currently going after XRP because they consider that to be a security. MtGox has been dead in over 7 years, I'm not sure how that's relevant today when we have well regulated exchanges.
    - cowpig 5y ago
      > we have well regulated exchanges Are you referring to crypto exchanges as "well regulated"? If so, can you give an example of one that fulfills that description?
      - rawtxapp 5y ago
        Coinbase [1], Gemini [2], Kraken [3]. The ones that don't abide by the rules get shut down very quickly [4][5]. 1: https://www.coinbase.com/legal/faq https://www.coinbase.com/legal/faq 2: https://support.gemini.com/hc/en-us/articles/204734485-Is-Gemini-licensed-and-or-regulated- https://support.gemini.com/hc/en-us/articles/204734485-Is-Ge... 3: https://support.kraken.com/hc/en-us/articles/360031282351-Is-Kraken-licensed-or-regulated- https://support.kraken.com/hc/en-us/articles/360031282351-Is... 4: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-03-12/crypto-exchange-binance-investigated-by-u-s-over-who-s-trading https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-03-12/crypto-ex... 5: https://www.theblockcrypto.com/post/84020/binance-blocking-us-users-exchange-email-2 https://www.theblockcrypto.com/post/84020/binance-blocking-u...

temp667 5y ago

If they would increase penalities and enforcement around failures to deliver we'd know they actually cared about a functioning market. Too many attorney's, not enough CPA's / Economists or investors in their staff.

gruez 5y ago
I see r/superstonk is leaking.
- temp667 5y ago
  Which I've never heard of. The idea you can sell something you don't own AND then fail to deliver it, is ridiculous. The fact that only bigger players can get away with this largely penalty free is even sillier and increases market fragility.
datavirtue 5y ago
They operate within the constraints of thier authority and resources. Complain to you congress person and or senator.

mvzvm 5y ago

More context here: https://www.wsj.com/articles/new-sec-enforcement-director-alex-oh-resigns-agency-says-11619644474 https://www.wsj.com/articles/new-sec-enforcement-director-al...

carbocation 5y ago
That is helpful! Thank you. > Ms. Oh decided to resign after a U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth, in an order issued Monday, questioned her conduct during a deposition in a case filed against Exxon Mobil Corp. Ms. Oh’s law firm, Paul Weiss, represents Exxon.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]