I feel like the people who wonder why this is a crime are missing something pretty important: this isn't the SEC attempting to regulate a crypto market by prosecuting securities fraud, it's the DOJ prosecuting straight-up old fashioned fraud. The crime is changing the terms of the transaction within the 12 second time frame after it had begun but before it had finished, and ultimately selling something different than what was promised. It doesn't matter that it's crypto, you could similarly be prosecuted for fraud by selling counterfeit pokemon cards if prosecutors could prove you knew that you were misrepresenting the cards as genuine cards. Here, the prosecutors have all the evidence they need from the code, and the Google searches showing what their intent was in writing that code.