6 ms·

Having worked at Amazon, I know the employees are fully aware of blackout periods. There is no way to claim plausible deniability there. It is easier for cluel

Having worked at Amazon, I know the employees are fully aware of blackout periods. There is no way to claim plausible deniability there. It is easier for clueless household members to get a hold of the earnings statement or unknowingly trade AMZN during blackout periods, so in some cases I can see how an honest mistake could happen. However, this guy traded 1.5M 11 times during blackout periods ahead of earning statements. There is just no way to claim ignorance there. He had to have known that it's illegal. I can't even begin to imagine the hubris or the stupidity. If they put Martha Stewart in prison for insider trading, they'll obviously put the husband of an Amazon employee without blinking. What was he thinking?

geoduck14 5y ago
Martha Stewart went to prison for LYING about insider trading.
Thorrez 5y ago
And even outside the blackout period, if you have material information that isn't publicly known and came from an inside source, it's illegal to trade.
lordnacho 5y ago
I think people simply don't appreciate that it's an easily caught crime. Most illegal things that one might do won't ever be caught, eg you break into someone's house and it would take the police to bother investigating and then put enough effort into that one case. Or to stay in white collar you might forget to report some income, how's the tax man to know unless you are already in focus? With insider trading the investigation is a DB query. It costs very little to look at all the trades for everyone around announcements and see who was acting suspiciously.
- TwoBit 5y ago
  And it's probably all automated.
  - infinite8s 5y ago
    A lot of it is. The SEC hires data scientists to come up with these analyses (in fact I think I've seen some on whoishiring threads).
- arp242 5y ago
  How do they know his wife worked for Amazon? Is this recorded? Or do you need to declare stuff like that? I don't know anything about trading; in naïve view would be that unless they have quite a bit of information about you that's not necessarily all that easily obtainable, it's not always so easy to detect?
  - lordnacho 5y ago
    They know everyone's trades. It's reported by all the exchanges. It's just a matter of scanning this DB and looking at the suspicious ones, which can't be that numerous. You can manually check for relationships at that point.
  - jrowley 5y ago
    If you looked at the timing of his trades combined with his success, that alone could be suspicious, which could lead to a quick investigation determining he was married to the insider employee.
  - newobj 5y ago
    Uhh I dunno say joint tax return with one person on an Amazon W2 and the other person reporting Amazon capital gains on their 1099B? Could it be any easier?
LatteLazy 5y ago
It should NOT be easy for a family member to get hold of a non public earnings statement. That stuff is highly confidential. You generally can't take it out of a small set of private offices, let alone leave it on the dining table...

geoduck14 5y ago

Martha Stewart went to prison for LYING about insider trading.

Thorrez 5y ago

And even outside the blackout period, if you have material information that isn't publicly known and came from an inside source, it's illegal to trade.

lordnacho 5y ago

I think people simply don't appreciate that it's an easily caught crime. Most illegal things that one might do won't ever be caught, eg you break into someone's house and it would take the police to bother investigating and then put enough effort into that one case. Or to stay in white collar you might forget to report some income, how's the tax man to know unless you are already in focus? With insider trading the investigation is a DB query. It costs very little to look at all the trades for everyone around announcements and see who was acting suspiciously.

TwoBit 5y ago
And it's probably all automated.
- infinite8s 5y ago
  A lot of it is. The SEC hires data scientists to come up with these analyses (in fact I think I've seen some on whoishiring threads).
arp242 5y ago
How do they know his wife worked for Amazon? Is this recorded? Or do you need to declare stuff like that? I don't know anything about trading; in naïve view would be that unless they have quite a bit of information about you that's not necessarily all that easily obtainable, it's not always so easy to detect?
- lordnacho 5y ago
  They know everyone's trades. It's reported by all the exchanges. It's just a matter of scanning this DB and looking at the suspicious ones, which can't be that numerous. You can manually check for relationships at that point.
- jrowley 5y ago
  If you looked at the timing of his trades combined with his success, that alone could be suspicious, which could lead to a quick investigation determining he was married to the insider employee.
- newobj 5y ago
  Uhh I dunno say joint tax return with one person on an Amazon W2 and the other person reporting Amazon capital gains on their 1099B? Could it be any easier?

LatteLazy 5y ago

It should NOT be easy for a family member to get hold of a non public earnings statement. That stuff is highly confidential. You generally can't take it out of a small set of private offices, let alone leave it on the dining table...