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bitstream [soylentnews.org] writes:

A trader on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange by the name of Navinder Sarao, 37 that operated from his parents home near Heathrow Airport in the UK is accused of helping to trigger the U.S. "flash crash [wikipedia.org]". Has now had a ruling on him by a court that he can be extradited to face trial [bbc.co.uk] in the U.S. He is accused of contributing to events on 2010-05-06 when the Dow Jones share index briefly fell more than 1000 points. The flash crash on 2010-05-06 temporarily wiped nearly 1 trillion USD off the value of shares. The U.S. authorities allege he is guilty of "spoofing" — the practice of placing large orders that manipulate the markets and then cancelling or changing them, allowing him to buy or sell at a profit and that this resulted in a profit of 40 million USD. U.S. authorities wants to have Sarao stand trial on 22 criminal counts. The charges carry a total jail time of 380 years. New York Times have a similar report [nytimes.com], that notes "This is not the last step for Mr. Sarao, as the extradition must next be reviewed by the Home Secretary."

What Sarao did seems quite similar to what high-speed and algorithmic traders do every day. There's earlier reports where "manual" traders get automated traders into trouble and then the manual trader gets sued. So perhaps a different standards is used depending on what connections the trader has? The implications of that is far reaching. The other part of this is that U.S. permitted to extradite persons that perhaps never entered U.S. soil ever.

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