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Comment by julianozen | Hacker News Reader

So, after doing some light Googling and AI research, this doesn’t seem to be strictly an “insider trading” charge from the SEC.

It looks more like a broader fraud case. The charges are commodities fraud / Commodity Exchange Act violation, wire fraud, and money laundering, and the case is being brought by the DOJ.

So, lawyers, please correct me if I’m wrong, but this feels more like prosecutors found a legal framework to charge him for conduct that resembles insider trading. By contrast, if he had sold Google stock based on insider knowledge, that would have more directly implicated SEC insider trading rules.

So, functionally, it feels like an insider trading case, but technically, it isn’t one.

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My understanding - "insider trading" is specifically for securities, and brought by the SEC. The equivalent for commodities is called "market manipulation", brought by the CFTC. Market manipulation is a much harder thing to prove than insider trading.

This kind of reminds me of the OpenSea "insider trading" scandal. [0]

Not a lawyer, not legal advice, etc.

[0] - https://www.mayerbrown.com/en/insights/publications/2025/09/...

Yeah I’m not entirely sure how what he did was illegal. I hope he can afford good attorneys. Hard to see this as anything other than a way to take the heat off the White House for using insider information to profit on prop betting sites.

The charges are a bit funny. [1] "From at least in or about October 2025 up to and including at least in or about December 2025, in the Southern District of New York and elsewhere outside of the jurisdiction of any particular State or district of the United States".

Um yes, everywhere is either inside of or outside of the jurisdiction of SDNY. But argueable, if you're charging somebody it only matters if it's _inside of_.

[1]: https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/media/1442621/dl

I think your reading of SDNY jurisdiction is a misreading. The SDNY is the venue for where the DOJ is charging them, which is fairly common for financial crime cases.

Right. I was very surprised because there aren't laws against insider trading on prediction markets.

So I genuinely don't understand what he is being charged with. What precisely is the "fraud"? The entire point of prediction markets is to get people with better information to participate, i.e. "insiders".

Insider trading with public corporations has tons of specific laws around it to clearly define what is insider information and what isn't. Prediction markets don't have any of that.

And the article does nothing whatsoever to clarify what the heck the actual fraud is supposed to be.

(And I understand this is against Google policy, but that's not what this is about.)

yes notably it is also not a civil case being brought by google for breaking the NDA

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