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Comment by samfisher83 | Hacker News Reader

I understand the plea deal, but why. I am assuming they had evidence she gave him the data. Why let her off?

May be they would have to risk a trial to convict both but he would plea guilty to protect his wife. If the state believes he was the most responsible then they may judge a guaranteed conviction without the cost of trial to be worth it.

The wife (and family) lost 2.6 million, plus her job, and the husband - so it's not like she got away with something, just avoided the worst of the punishment.

disgorged 2.6 million, that means just losing the ill-gotten gains. It's not fair to call that "lost".

No. $2.6M "in disgorgement, interest and penalties." The ill-gotten gains were only $1.4M.

They had to pay back their gains, pay additional fees, and one of them serves jail time. They did not get away with anything.

If they kept the $2.6M in a liquid saving account just for cases like this one, yeah, that wouldn't be so bad. But I don't expect that's the case and in practice that could mean for example losing her house.

> I understand the plea deal, but why. I am assuming they had evidence she gave him the data. Why let her off?

"Giving someone the data" is probably a different violation to "trading with illegally obtained data".

She probably got a different penalty (breaking NDA or similar) then he did.

if you don't personally profit from the bet... it's not one.

>Insider trading violations may also include "tipping" such information, securities trading by the person "tipped," and securities trading by those who misappropriate such information.

It sounds to me like even giving information to someone if you know that person will trade is illegal.

https://www.investor.gov/introduction-investing/investing-ba...

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