Two Auto Engineers Charged With Insider Trading

United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Jay Clayton, and Assistant Director in Charge of the New York Field Office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (“FBI”), James C. Barnacle, Jr., announced today the unsealing of an Indictment charging MICHAEL STAMP and MARCUS PLANK with securities fraud. The charges arise from an alleged insider trading scheme in which STAMP and PLANK used confidential information belonging to their then-employer, Volkswagen Group, concerning a joint venture between Volkswagen and Rivian Automotive, Inc. to make hundreds of thousands of dollars in illegal profits. STAMP and PLANK were arrested today and will be presented in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. The case has been assigned to U.S. District Judge Katherine Polk Failla. [...]

Between April and July 2024, STAMP and PLANK engaged in a scheme to trade in the securities of Rivian Automotive, Inc. based on material nonpublic information concerning a multibillion-dollar joint venture between Rivian and Volkswagen Group. STAMP and PLANK were employees of a Volkswagen subsidiary and worked in the United States on temporary assignment form Germany. Through their positions, they gained access to confidential, nonpublic information concerning Volkswagen’s ongoing negotiations with Rivian about a potential joint venture. Despite owing duties of trust and confidence to their employer, STAMP and PLANK began purchasing options and equity positions in Rivian shortly after learning of the joint venture discussions. On June 25, 2025, Rivian and Volkswagen publicly announced their joint venture, and Rivian’s share price rose 23% the following day. STAMP and PLANK then sold their Rivian positions, with STAMP realizing approximately $250,000 in profits, PLANK realizing at least approximately $50,000 in profits, and PLANK’s close family member realizing approximately $12,000 in profits. STAMP and PLANK understood their actions were illegal. For example, eight days prior to the announcement of the joint venture, STAMP searched “statute of limitations insider trading,” and following the announcement PLANK’s close family member searched, in German, “how is insider trading prosecuted?”

by DOJ Press Releases

Wisconsin’s Warning on Election Bets Intensifies Fight With Prediction Markets

Brian Hildebrand was glad when Wisconsin officials recently warned that voters can’t legally cast a ballot in an election they bet on.

The 39-year-old Milwaukee resident sees the prospect of people betting on elections as a “perversion of democracy”—especially in a swing state like Wisconsin where a lot is at stake.

“The fact that our elections are also nail-biters makes it that much worse,” said Hildebrand, a software developer. “The electoral process is not one about greed, and this introduces direct financial incentive, no matter how small, into that process.”

The warning by the Wisconsin Elections Commission last week opened a new front in the escalating legal battle between prediction markets and the state regulators fighting to ban them.

Kalshi, the country’s biggest prediction-market operator by trading volume, immediately shot back and accused the commission of “active voter suppression”—and noted that it has hundreds of thousands of users in the state.

by WSJ

Founder Of Private Equity Firm Pleads Guilty

United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Jay Clayton, announced today that JAY LUCAS, the founder and managing partner of Lucas Brand Equity LLC (“LBE”), a private equity fund based in Manhattan, pled guilty to securities fraud, investment adviser fraud, wire fraud, and money laundering in connection with a scheme to raise over $50 million from investors by falsely representing that their money would be invested in early-stage health and wellness companies. Instead, LUCAS diverted much of that money to cover personal expenses, promote unrelated ventures, and make Ponzi-like payments to earlier investors. LUCAS pled guilty today before U.S. Magistrate Judge Robyn F. Tarnofsky.

by DOJ Press Releases

When a president’s thoughts are for sale

The most stunning feature of all this is that little, if any, of it is illegal. Neither Trump nor his vice-president, JD Vance, are covered by the federal conflicts of interest law, which bans officials from financial exposure to entities affected by their work. On top of that, Trump is also covered by the Supreme Court’s 2024 ruling giving the US president near-blanket immunity from anything defined as an “official act”. Highly paid lawyers exist precisely to be able to make such definitions. The only law that bans Trump from monetising his office is the US constitution’s emoluments clause. Enforcement of that belongs to Congress, however, which is Republican-controlled and thus studiously uninterested in the contents of this note.

Two further speculations. The first is how much more brazen Trump will get in the next two and a half years. He has already mused about taking federal government stakes in big AI companies, which raises concerns about their becoming too-big-to-fail and behaving more recklessly. Which law will stop him from also taking big personal stakes? That way he could catapult his net worth into Putin territory. The second is that Democrats are promising big corruption probes if they regain control of Capitol Hill in November. But their record on investigations is not stellar. Nor can there be much confidence that Trump’s Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission would comply with congressional subpoenas.

by FT Cryptofinance

Arthur Hayes, BitMEX co-founders face fraud claims over alleged 'Insider Trading Desk' as exchange winds down

Two former BitMEX customers filed a proposed class action against the crypto exchange and its three co-founders on the same day the platform announced it would shut down permanently in September 2026.

BKX Services Inc. and David Namdar allege that BitMEX operated an undisclosed "Insider Trading Desk" that traded against its own customers using private account data. [...]

Dwyer ran the Insider Trading Desk from BitMEX's Manhattan office throughout 2018, the plaintiffs claim. They allege the desk used software to identify which price movements would liquidate the most customers, then placed trades to induce those moves.

BitMEX told users that hidden orders were concealed from other traders and that liquidation points stayed private, according to the filing. The complaint alleges the Insider Trading Desk saw all of it, and that BitMEX created burner accounts paired with generic email addresses to disguise its own trading.

The plaintiffs also allege the exchange manipulated prices on third-party reference exchanges to force liquidations on its own platform.

by The Block

Market-Friendly Chinese Securities Regulator Faces Communist Party Probe

Beijing’s purge of Communist Party officials now threatens a former star securities regulator—nearly two years after he retired.

For years, Fang Xinghai was the official whom many foreign investors called when they needed someone in Beijing who spoke their language—literally and figuratively. A Stanford-trained economist with crisp English, Fang was one of a shrinking cohort of Chinese officials whom Wall Street trusted to explain, and often defend, Beijing’s handling of its markets.

Fang, who stepped down as vice chairman of the China Securities Regulatory Commission in 2024, has been put under investigation by the party’s Central Commission for Discipline Inspection for suspected “serious violations of discipline and law,” the agency said in a statement Friday.

The nature of the allegations against Fang couldn’t be determined. But the fact that the government publicly announced that he is being investigated by the Chinese Communist Party’s corruption watchdog indicates Fang is in serious trouble.

by WSJ