> If he bought modern off the shelf software it wouldn't necessarily have this quirk where you could retrospectively decide which shares the customer owned. He

> If he bought modern off the shelf software it wouldn't necessarily have this quirk where you could retrospectively decide which shares the customer owned. He may have found it hard to justify asking someone to write new software for a new machine with this feature without them getting suspicious. So he kept the old machine going. As mentioned in the link referenced by this comment[0]: > Perez and O’Hara were found guilty for their role in the fraud, and were sentenced by U.S. District Judge Laura Taylor Swain to two-and-a-half years in prison, which was the minimum sentence. So even for the old machine that they continued to use, its programmers were found to be guilty i.e. they knew what they were doing was wrong. [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29359292#29360041 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29359292#29360041