If anything this just shows that the SEC has all the tools in the world to stop illegal activity, yet it does nothing, so long as you're part of the Wall street establishment.
We get it: you think the law is different from big firms and little firms. Stipulate that it in many ways is, and that still has nothing to do with this case, in which a large syndicate of criminals actually set up a SAAS business selling tradable pre-release press releases.
What? No. They broke into servers at PR Newswire and Business Wire and used the stolen MNPI to make trades. There is nothing about rogue or lone traders here. This was sophisticated international group of hackers and traders engaged in obviously illegal behavior.
But I disagree with you about Stevie Cohen. Quite a few of his underlings took a fall, but he personally emerged scot free. He simply wrote a very big check and made his problems go away. He's busy managing his remaining billions in a "family office".
[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/31/business/dealbook/us-asks-...
He's the best example of how the insiders are allowed to do it, while everyone else is not. As long as you call it an "experts network" and as long as you structure your corporate hierarchy properly you can do insider trading all day every day! Just ask Steven Cohen.
How does it show anything at all about what the SEC does with the establishment?