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7 Person CFTC Team Charges Gold Manipulators Identified First On Zero Hedge With Gold And Silver Spoofing
Last Tuesday, as part of our ongoing effort to help the clueless commodity regulator, the CFTC, do its jobs of identifying, preventing and punishing manipulators, we wrote "Dear CFTC: Here Is Today's Illegal "Spoofing" In Gold Futures" in which we presented "3 examples of spoofing in gold futures which, you'll note, aren't difficult to spot if one is willing to expend the tiniest effort."
The gold spoofing was obvious, and as as the following Nanex charts showed, a cursory glance revealed how large buy and sell orders push prices up and down without every transacting.
2. Another set of instances appear about 50 minutes after the first set (shown in chart 1).
3. Another set of spoofing instances appear about an hour after the second set (shown in chart 2).
We go the spoofing right, but we got our audience wrong because the very next day it was not the CFTC, but the exchange on which said manipulation was taking place, the CME, that issued an order denying access to the alleged spoofers we had identified just hours before, Heet Khara and Nasim Salim, and which would be barred from trading on the CME for a period of 60 days.
Fast forward to today when, humiliated at having its job done not only by a for-profit exchange but a tinfoil fring blog first, the CFTC finally did its job and charged United Arab Emirates residents Heet Khara and Nasim Salim with "Spoofing in the Gold and Silver Futures Markets." Note: "and silver" - this is important.
Here is the full CFTC order:
Court Issues an Ex Parte Restraining Order Freezing Defendants’ Assets and Preserving Records
Washington, DC – The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) today announced the filing of a civil enforcement action in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York against Heet Khara and Nasim Salim, residents of the United Arab Emirates. According to the CFTC’s Complaint, Defendants engaged in unlawful disruptive trading practices known as “spoofing” in the gold and silver futures markets by placing bids and offers with the intent to cancel them before execution.
Based on Defendants’ pattern of unlawful spoofing conduct and the potential for dissipation of Defendants’ assets, on May 5, 2015, U.S. District Judge Deborah A. Batts issued an Order freezing and preserving assets under Defendants’ control and prohibiting them from destroying documents or denying CFTC staff access to their books and records. The court scheduled a hearing on the CFTC’s motion for a preliminary injunction for May 19, 2015.
The Complaint alleges that between at least February 2015 and at least April 28, 2015, Defendants Khara and Salim, both individually and in a coordinated fashion, regularly placed larger aggregate orders for gold and silver futures contracts on the Commodity Exchange, Inc. (COMEX) opposite smaller orders and cancelled the larger orders after the smaller orders were executed.
CME Group Inc.’s (CME Group) Market Regulation Department identified the disruptive trading practices and initiated an investigation. On or about April 30, 2015, CME Group issued notices summarily denying Defendants Khara and Salim’s access to all CME Group markets and any trading platforms owned or controlled by CME Group. CME Group Inc. operates four self-regulatory organizations and designated contract markets, which are the Chicago Mercantile Exchange Inc., Board of Trade of the City of Chicago, Inc., New York Mercantile Exchange, Inc., and COMEX.
CFTC Director of Enforcement Aitan Goelman commented: “Protecting the integrity and stability of the U.S. futures markets is critical to ensuring a properly functioning financial system. Aggressive prosecution of spoofing is an important part of that mission. Today’s actions make clear that the CFTC will partner with self-regulatory organizations to find and swiftly prosecute those who engage in such disruptive trading practices, wherever they may be.”
In its ongoing litigation, the CFTC is seeking preliminary and permanent injunctive relief, civil monetary penalties, and equitable relief including trading and registration bans and disgorgement.
Curious where your taxpayer dollars go? It took the CFTC seven (7) well-paid manipulation sleuths to figure out what was revealed on the pages of Zero Hedge on the day of the manipulation, without us ever having accepted a single taxpayer dollar.
CFTC Division of Enforcement staff members responsible for this matter are Patryk J. Chudy, David Oakland, Neel Chopra, Katie Rasor, Trevor Kokal, Lenel Hickson, and Manal Sultan.
Finally:
The CFTC thanks and acknowledges the assistance of the CME Group in this matter.
You are welcome.
And perhaps in retrospect it is time for the CFTC to revise its announcement from September 25, 2013...
The @CFTC Closes Investigation Concerning the Silver Markets. http://t.co/JZRliwfW6P
— CFTC (@CFTC) September 25, 2013
... in which it said:
"The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC or Commission) Division of Enforcement has closed the investigation that was publicly confirmed in September 2008 concerning silver markets. The Division of Enforcement is not recommending charges to the Commission in that investigation. For law enforcement and confidentiality reasons, the CFTC only rarely comments publicly on whether it has opened or closed any particular investigation. Nonetheless, given that this particular investigation was confirmed in September 2008, the CFTC deemed it appropriate to inform the public that the investigation is no longer ongoing. Based upon the law and evidence as they exist at this time, there is not a viable basis to bring an enforcement action with respect to any firm or its employees related to our investigation of silver markets."
Because, you see, had the "woefully underbudgeted" CFTC, which needed at least 7 employees to discover what took Nanex and Zero Hedge about 10 minutes of work, not closed its particular investigation, it would have caught not only this but countless other instances of gold and silver manipulation...
The good news, of course, is that with a UK spoofer, working out of his parents' basement, having been charged with causing the Flash Crash, and now two Arabs found guilty of manipulating gold and silver, both the S&P and the gold markets are once again completely unrigged, the CFTC is on top of everything, and investors should, please, come right back in.
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At least we know things will all be legit now for gold and silver, thank goodness.
Yep. Gold's down today on the good news.
Thank God the CFTC has caught the manipulators, who cleverly hid their $1.5 billion so well the CFTC will never find it.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-11-05/because-nothing-says-best-execu...
Damn, hell has indeed frozen over and pigs are flying!
Did they send a thank you card, Tyler?
Keep going Tyler! Keep throwing those punches and don't stop until you have bring them down.
Jill Sommers, Gary Gensler, Bart Chilton. World Class pieces of banker ass-kissing, Congress-obfuscating, public-screwing; festering slimey slug shit.
The CFTC exists to subvert genuine regulation. The CFTCs undeclared mandate is to foster banker/regulatory collusion while maintaining the illusion of actual lawfulness.
The CFTC isnt bumbling. The CFTC with deliberate evil intent, implements the schemes of the banks, as it simultaneously creates a dissembling matrix of regulation.
Sommers, Chilton, Gensler. All rewarded by the financial sector for their vile ''public'' service.
The CFTC represents the absolute worst of banker-beholden, corrupt America, as retiring CFTC Judge Painter revealed. For his efforts, the CFTC tried to tar him as a drunk.
These sespicable CFTC Commisioner pieces of shit must have laughed their evil asses off when they put out their public call for opinion on ''position limiits".
On behalf of all that America ever stood for, fuck you Gary Gensler. Fuck you Bart Chilton, Fuck you Jill Sommers. Your accounting of what you sold for your corrupt banker millions was the worst financial calcuation you ever made in your miserable lives.
Great job Tylers, but we all know the real manipulation is the massive co-ordinated offside attacks by the Fed Banks owners, not this spoofing.
Meanwhile they trade 200 million oz of paper gold a day on the LBMA and we hear crickets.
That's the real rig.
Waddell & Reed... again?
.
. .
0
Tyler, the reason why it took 7 investigators is because....of all the spoofers out there, it took a lot of time to find TWO GUYS who were not Wall Street Insiders....The top 100 or so spoofers on Wall Street have 'can't touch' clauses in their agreements with the CFTC.
Washington, DC – The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) today announced the filing of a civil enforcement action --
So no criminal sanctions, only slappy handee? Why not some frog walks, at the highest levels?
Helping the Handicapped is it's own reward.
Tyler is a tattletale, na, na, na, na, na
I would not trade this shit with a ten foot pole or a little bill clinton dick.
These assholes have made these markets into snake pits. Silver margins are insane. I know of no traders of thousands who trade this shit.
To those who do: Fuck you assholes!!!
the CFTC has helped to destroy the free market. They should be labeled as traitors and hung from trees just like the bankers.
My last pay check was $9500 working 12 hours a week online. My sisters friend has been averaging 15k for months now and she works about 20 hours a week. I can't believe how easy it was once I tried it out. This is what I do... www.jobs-review.com
These are Saudi names, right?
Wake me up when they prosecute a jew
Be careful there hombrie. Our Lord in heaven, Jesus Christ who died for you so your sins could be forgiven, was a Jew.
Jesus chased the Jews out of the Temple
because they had made it a den of thieves.
Jesus called the Jews a synagogue of Satan.
Nothing has changed among the Jews in 2000 years.
Those Jews are gone. The promise GOD gave Abraham (the father of all believers, Jew and Gentile) is that he would bless those who blessed him and curse those who cursed him. (Genesis 12:3). Mistreatment of Jews is forbidden...
Don't be cursed by GOD now.
Surely ZH will be given a reward ,,, ya know ,,,, for the effort.
Hey whistle blowers get rewards all the time. Not so much in the financial industry though.
For anyone aquiering gold or silver here is a calculator I use that helps in buying dips:
http://debtcrash.report/entry/debtcrash-metal-purchase-program
It's a free download.
This is the dip. You should have put this up 3 years ago.
Tyler is due a Qui tam check! Send them a bill Tyler.
Thanks, one less item on my list of things I don't know.
Just about a bazillion left to go.
"Hey Lama! How about a little something... you know... for the effort?" -Greenskeeper Carl
The Feds only give rewards to people who report tax cheats. They only care when they are being robbed not when PM investors are
Unga Ganunga!
Trader Dan would like to testify on behalf of the defendants.
Incompetence. Hypocrisy. Arrogance. Stupidity. Waste.
Government. Nuff said...
Congrats to ZH.
Subtle problem. They were spoofing to the upside. Wake me up when something happens with those dumping 2 years worth of global production in 30 seconds.
+100
What was the small order they executed. Buy or sell.
Keep it up Zero Hedge. This is probably the top alternative media site for influence.**
** (of non-government funded entities)
There, I just gave you your first upvote from me ever, for making a post without pimping your blog.
Kudos.
This is a business too, if it's going to be anything serious as intended, gotta make those hoes dance on the block until you get off the block....................
Long delays getting physical...
Starting last October, to get simple delivery of PM's has incurred several week to several month delays.
Somehow, I think that spoofing does not play a part in that.
What does it mean when so many are selling things they plainly do not have at the time of sale, and require ever-longer delays to get?????
They call that "financial innovation". Don't you, you know, feel financially innovated?
72 hours from Money Metals Exchange.
(the Wells Fargo Armored car out front was a bad neighbor hood tell though.)
prosecuting moar brown people. how funny.
Whew, that was close....I thought for sure they were knocking at my door. I've become a brown person since moving to Florida 6 months ago...
Good job ZH! Nanex needs their props too
I hoped to buy some data from Nanex a few years ago, then politely did not pursue it. Why? Because I was told the data they sell has all the buys and sells, but no names. It's only when the government provides them with names can they identify the culprits.
My hat off to Nanex for doing what they do, but don't expect certain names to be provided for them to trace. If this has changed, I gladly apologize, but since small fish only surface, the real culprits seem still hidden. Also kudos to the Tylers for what they do, too.
Wake up, real coin demand is imploding. https://www.silverinstitute.org/site/2015/05/06/key-components-of-global...
Wake up, real coin demand is EXPLODING.
Fixed it.
Kat-chum, what are you talking about? Just because it dropped in 2014 from 2013? Here's from your link; "In 2014, silver coin and bar purchases remained at historically high levels, primarily due to growth in silver coin demand in several key markets. Growth was experienced in the United States, Canada, India and Spain. Silver coins and medals demand was 107.6 Moz last year."
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How soon until all the ZeroHedge'ers get job offers at the SEC!?
I'll shut up now.
•?•
V-V Good stuff, guys!
Nice work ! Waiting for the encore.
7 Person CFTC Team! Well that's a readily identifiable 600% waste there.
Keep up your sterling work, assholes.
Got to get credits in the press releases, otherwise hard to get a private sector job.
We spoofed some folks.
Well done ZH.
Indeed. Kudos
Sheeeeit...Market Makers do that all the time, trying to move the market their way....
When are they going to charge Janet Yellen, Ben Bernanke and Alan Greenspan with sedition, fraud, blackmail, larceny, and otherwise spoofing the schmucks ?
There's an easy way to instantly eliminate this problem-- deny all order cancellations. Require the trade to go through, period.
Tee Hee. Not even that.
Make all orders good for five minutes, and watch them fry in their own sauce.
Wait a minute, though...
Now that some aspect of the regulatory enforcement arm has put some enforcement of these sorts of market frauds on the books, we are that much further towards getting every relevant enforcement arm of every releveant .gov enforcement agency a grand total of a small percentage of all the HFT trading operators have made as a small tax on their continued operations, right?
I don't know... perhaps some of the appropriate people, who aren't planning to 'retire' to those firms, or the whole or part now-or-future-owners of same, will get serious and risk the .gov-enforcement-attempt version of death-by-nailgun-or-whatever by taking things a bit further than that, even.
I'm not holding my breath, but I haven't read any relevant scripture which would rule that out. If the great whore in Revelation is the great finantialization sweeping the globe, might even make sense a few people in .gov would be upset at some of the more egregious violations taking place and attempt to build a basis to use to react, right?
Such happy days in the land of the-pursuit-of-happiness. Perhaps 'happiness' has its own set of rewards.
Seems like the attempt to create a land of freedom on Earth had to come before the attempt to create a New Jeruselem on Earth. Just a thought. Interesed in other peoples' perspectives, as usual. The level of discorse in ZH commentary is great, IMO.
'So, let's see here, you stole $400 million. So cut us in, I mean let's fine you $10 or $15 million and call it good'
Seen it before.
Book em Dano
so.... when Jp Morgan gets nailed let's all join a class action lawsuit. I want my 'money' back
Geez Tyler's,
You should get a whistle blowers cut of the action.
Or is that prison?
I forgot.
Military winning
Bank lobby losing
@ekm1,
I wish I could see what you see, but I don't.
I respect this lady immensly. Check out Catherine Austin-Fitts latest.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=K73gNKjFx0I
BTW, is anyone else in YouTube buffering HELL?
buffering? That's what video downloadhelper in firefox is for. Save the file & who cares about the buffering. I rarely see under 600k/sec transfer speed.
@MDB,
thank you.
I've been jacking with this for 2 days. Downloaded an add-on @ Mozilla that did f'all to fix it.
Even fancier: downloadhelper can give you the URL, you can make your own HTML file, save a bunch of URLs then and use "downthemall", another add-on... and literally download them all. It will rip files as fast as the server can send them.
you can configure speed and/or file-total limits at a time per server if you notice it slowing down per transfer when you have 10 or more or something.
Really handy for xhamster... cough-cough ... I mean youtube
Military winning=strong dollar
Bank Lobby winning=weak dollar
You were right, ekm1.
It doesn't matter. The damage has been done to those who were stupid enough to transact on the sell side and deliver. The gold has shifted
I'm all in FAVOR of honest trading.
But HELP me out here. Doesn't Spoofing simply mean that someone placed an ORDER and then CANCELLED it? So WHY IS THAT ILLEGAL?
I am serious. Suppose you call your broker, place a BUY on Natural Gas. And then a couple of minutes later you realize it was a disaster, so you call your broker again and tell him to CANCEL that order. And then you luck out, and he gets it cancelled before it goes through. Did you just engage in SPOOFING? Or was this a perfectly legitimate process?
Yeah - I know. Spoofing involves the placement of thousands of Orders and Cancellations by a computer. BUT SO WHAT? If one transaction is LEGAL, why arren't 10,000 transactions legal?
You know where I am going with this!
SPOOFING only works because there are a huge number of algo's that are reading the Order Process. BUT WHY ARE ALGORITHM's allowed access to this information? That is "prior market knowledge", and by definition it is EVERY BIT as illegal as SPOOFING.
The court cases against these SPOOFING players are looking pretty thorny if you ask me - there is a good chance it will blow the lid off the entire market process. And that process stinks of dead fish at the current time.
Thanks for asking the question, was thinking the same thing. Why is it illegal to place orders then cancel? If its illegal to cancel an order than why does the exchange allow you to click your mouse and cancel it?
What quantity of cancels becomes illegal? What is the threashold? Who decides?
No criminal intent on your part .... criminal intent could be proven if orders were exceptionally large, you didn't have the funds to complete them and if you repeated the spoofing and profited from secondary trades which benefited from your spoofing .... for starters ?
Intent BITCHEZ!
If a 0.00001 kiloton explosion is legal (somewhere), then why not a 10,000,000 kiloton explosion?
What difference will it make?
Spoofing is fun .... at the Mammoth Mountain fishery .... visitors could buy a handful of fish chow .... from a "peanut vending machine" .... and toss it to the mature breeders pond .... the fish roiled and the waters boiled .... my brother and I quickly learned .... if you just pretended to throw chow .... they snapped at the shadow of your smile .... the game wardens never caught on to our little spoof ! (WARNING: peanuts were processed on the machinery)
Keep it going Tylers -- and keep sending it to the regulators -- I think the regulators are scared that if they do nothing, then Congress may ask them why they did nothing. Unlike HIllary, the regulators cannot hide their emails!
Tim Massad is a fucking Cylon.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timothy_Massad
Is Massad a Muslim ?
Human
No different than you.
So, only had to go to the other side of world to find these guys?
Look out your fucking window.
All seven of you.
"7 Person CFTC Team Charges Gold Manipulators Identified First On Zero Hedge With Gold And Silver Spoofing"
Prepare for a PM hammering. I am Jaded to Hell.
"Identified First On Zero Hedge"
ZH has always had the BEST coverage of impacting news, whether economic or otherwise. The fact is that ZH BREAKS news and, at times, MAKES news by doing the THINKING that the MSM "Economists" either CANNOT do or REFUSE to do.
ZH, the most American, in the sense of what this nation was founded upon, of all media outlets.
ZH's coverage of Fukushima at the time was UNMATCHED.
If it is IMPORTANT ZH will have it first and BEST, just a simple fact.
I DON'T like the SPOOFING more than anybody else. Whatever happened to HONESTY in the USA - FAIR markets run with OPEN FREE trade policies? How did this become dead???
BUT I will tell you this ...
There's a GREAT legal defense that could work for Khara and Salim in the UAE. And the same defense will also work for Sarao in the UK. And if their lawyers (or barristers) figure it out, they could walk away from these trials Scot-Free. Or at least have a good shot at freedom.
WHETHER that will happen is anybody's guess. But these legal proceedings against the "Spoofers" will be very interesting to watch. It's just like Mayweather vs. Pacquiao fight. It's high-stakes drama, and you never know what happens when the referee starts the fight!
Color me nonplussed.
I'm thinking the real manipulation has institutional backing.
So any appearance of forebearance here seems a red herring.
Does anyone here know if this information has anything to do with JPM stashing all the silver?
Well done ZH. You have done with the MSM would never do, take on the cabal - and win!
I don't want to seem like an ingrate, because you have done the small trader community a great service by uncovering this scandal, but it would be even better if you could use the tools that are at your disposal to identify the massive short-side abuses that have been perpetrated against the commodities markets - primarily PM's.
As "agent default" and other bloggers have pointed out, long side abuse is also important, but almost all of us suspect that the most flagrant abuse is occurring to the short side - probably by central or money center banks to artificially prop up currency values and/or allow them to establish large long physical positions. I and others suspect that this is not being done with 'spoofing' but with actual massive orders that are being placed in violation of exchange position size limits.
Thanks again for your efforts.
Which is why anyone who works for the U.S. government is a complete loser.
You have fallen to the lowest employment class.
Thank heaven they caught these bastards! Now I can rest easy and watch my gold-silver portfolio climb to the heavens.
Thank heaven they caught these bastards! Now I can rest easy and watch my gold-silver portfolio climb to the heavens.