From my understanding Goldman Sachs typically makes money selling these kinds of derivatives through sellers fees. i.e. They are not actually backing the debt behind the derivative, they are just selling it and collecting a fee (typically, around 0.3%).
If this is true then the deal simply looks like a bad one for the buyers, but not in any unusual way. They purchased derivatives linked to Apple's stock price the day before the earnings were made public. They bet of good news and they lost.
The Goldman deals that were fraudulent were around Goldman recommending their customers buy derivatives they themselves owned and were furiously offloading. Or they were selling derivatives and then betting against those derivatives through AIG.
This article would make sense if we could demonstrate that Goldman actually stood to gain from Apple's precipitous stock price fall. But that connection isn't obvious to me.
I would love to hear from someone with real knowledge about these things. Also if anyone can pick holes in what I wrote about I would appreciate that too.