As a trader, that does look really bad. These people know that the market looks at the orders to guess the state of supply and demand. The penalty looks big but it's over an 8 year period.

It's not exactly a secret that some market participants work out some kind of imbalance measure, and of you've ever implemented a system like that, like I've done, it will have crossed your mind that you could shove a load of orders in that mask the imbalance for everyone else. But you have heard of the spoofing rules and you don't do it. If we want a functioning market without a reputation for sharks, there's some rules to be followed.

Iirc they got a guy thrown in jail for this? Sarao or something like that? He had someone build him a spoofing machine and made a lot of money, though it's not clear to me how much was from doing this specifically.

In case you're wondering about that intention to cancel phrase, of course there are participants like market makers who do cancel a lot of orders. In that case it's a matter of them following the market in providing liquidity, they are not doing it to fool everyone.