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A senior IT professional who was a trusted employee of a top Silicon Valley law firm is headed to prison.
Dimitry Braverman was arrested last year at his home in San Mateo, California. The 42-year-old man was accused of loading up on stocks and options for companies he knew had mergers or other major transactions on the way, because he had access to confidential information at the law firm he worked at, Wilson Sonsini Goodrich and Rosati.
Braverman, who made $305,000 in profits off the illegal transactions, pled guilty in November. The companies he traded on included retailer Gymboree, Drugstore.com, Epicor Software, Seagate Technology, software firm Dealertrack Technologies, storage company Xyratex, and pharmaceutical companies YM Biosciences and Astex Pharmaceuticals.
Aristotle Onassis made his first real money listening in on phone calls while he worked as a switchboard operator in Argentina. He went on to marry Jackie Kennedy.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 02 2015, @03:08PM
So there are arbitrary rules that say you can't make use of information you have available to you to choose what to invest in or what not to invest in in certain situations. Capitalism sure is logical.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 02 2015, @06:02PM
You have never heard of insider trading? Really?
Okay here is the reasoning: Capitalism relies on well informed market actors having access to the same information for it to work and (presumably) be fair. If someone knows BP just blew up another oil rig and takes a short position on it before the news hits, then they can make out far more money at everyone else's expense. You know, just like stealing but harder to detect. Something similar would be a doctor allowing a patient to elect an expensive surgery without bothering to tell them that it will probably kill them just so the doctor gets to charge for it.
So yes it is bad to let everyone use the information they have and others don't to make financial decisions. Nevermind that capitalist theory was originally intended to be descriptive instead of prescriptive, and that was two hundred years ago.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 02 2015, @09:08PM
It was never meant to be logical, only exploitative, inherently meant only to benefit the rich and exploit the poor. The creators of capitalism said it best:
Arthur Young - "everyone but an idiot knows that the lower classes must be kept poor, or they will never be industrious"
Patrick Colquhoun - "Poverty is therefore a most necessary and indispensable ingredient in society…It is the source of wealth, since without poverty, there could be no labour; there could be no riches, no refinement, no comfort, and no benefit to those who may be possessed of wealth"
(Score: 2) by darkfeline on Sunday August 02 2015, @09:44PM
Capitalism wasn't designed to be exploitative. Capitalism was designed logically and theoretically to work, just like socialism should in theory work and democracy in theory work and monarchy in theory work and so on. In reality human sociopathy kicks in more often than not.
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