If you happened to be one of the lucky people who bought options on a stock, index or whatever and in 24-48 hours it goes from being out of the money to deep in the money, all these algorithms kick off and your name ends up on a list with the SEC. Next they start pulling your bank records and brokerage account records (which they have instant access to) to check for the obvious such as how old is this account, how often does it trade, how often you get lucky, where does your wife work, etc (last one is not a joke, they watch for people married to lawyers and such). As the flags go off, more people get involved, phones calls get made and accounts start getting frozen and then some dude wearing dark glasses on a cloudy day shows up at your office.

Say what you will about government agencies, the SEC takes insider trading very seriously and they are very well equipped to deal with it. Something so obvious happens from time to time but rarely works. At least not on a scale to move markets (a couple million here and there is nothing in grand scheme of things but even that gets caught). I’m a little skeptical here.