Manipulated: Learning from case files

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This show reconstructs real market-abuse cases from the court record, for the surveillance analysts, compliance teams and traders whose job is to catch the next one. Each episode takes one case (front running, spoofing, benchmark rigging, insider trading) and walks through exactly how it worked: the trades, the timestamps, the recorded calls, and the red flags that were there all along. No hype, no speculation. Every number traces back to DOJ filings, trial exhibits and court opinions.

Episodes

  1. 5d ago

    Morgan Stanley's Block-Trade Leaks

    Morgan Stanley promised block-trade sellers confidentiality, yet, per SEC findings and a Statement of Facts the bank accepted as true, the head of its block desk and a second desk member told chosen hedge-fund clients what was coming, and those clients shorted the stock and covered with allocations from the same block. Morgan Stanley was not criminally charged and paid more than $249 million under a non-prosecution agreement and a settled SEC order; the desk head, Pawan Passi, had his one securities-fraud charge dismissed after a six-month deferred prosecution agreement and was never convicted.How Morgan Stanley's block desk tipped hedge funds before its clients' sales — a $249 million resolution, and no conviction for anyoneLegal status (as of 2026-10-25)Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC: not criminally charged. Three-year non-prosecution agreement from January 2024, running to about January 2027; it accepted responsibility for its employees' acts and accepted the Statement of Facts as true. Settled SEC order: censure and cease-and-desist.Pawan Passi: charged by information on January 12, 2024 with one count of securities fraud; pleaded not guilty; entered a six-month deferred prosecution agreement in which he agreed not to contest the described conduct. Prosecutors dropped the charge (nolle prosequi) and the case was terminated on July 25, 2024. Never convicted. Settled SEC order: cease-and-desist, $250,000 penalty (paid), and industry bars with the right to apply for reentry after 1 year (supervisory: 2 years).Employee-1 (unnamed in the record): no charge found in the public record.Buy-side investors (unnamed in the record): no public enforcement action found.Chapters0:00 Cold open1:06 The Promise3:18 The Playbook7:40 Eight Days In May12:02 Smells Fishy15:11 The Resolution18:01 The Aftermath19:18 What This Means For Surveillance

  2. Sep 26

    Ep 1: How HSBC Front-Ran a $3.5 Billion FX Order

    On December 7, 2011, Cairn Energy trusted HSBC with a $3.5 billion currency conversion, and a promise that it would be handled quietly. Instead, HSBC's FX desk set a ceiling of 1.5730 in advance, exactly 100 pips above the rate when the order came in. They ramped sterling into the 3 p.m. WM/Reuters fix, and when Cairn asked about the spike, they blamed the Russian Central Bank. In this episode we rebuild the trade minute by minute from the court record: the recorded calls, the 2:54 p.m. instruction six minutes before the fix window, the $7–8 million profit, and HSBC's $101.5 million settlement. Then comes the twist. Mark Johnson was convicted, served his sentence, and saw his conviction vacated in 2025, after a Supreme Court ruling threw out the legal theory used to convict him. The trading facts were never disproven. For surveillance analysts, we cover what would flag this today: a pre-calculated target price, calls followed by correlated trading, abnormal price action inside the fix window, and a client explanation that didn't match the order book. Sources: United States v. Johnson, 945 F.3d 606 (2d Cir. 2019); Johnson v. United States, No. 24-1221 (2d Cir. 2025); DOJ Information, United States v. HSBC Holdings plc, No. 18-cr-00030 (EDNY).

    Ep 1: How HSBC Front-Ran a $3.5 Billion FX Order
  • 2 Episodes

About

This show reconstructs real market-abuse cases from the court record, for the surveillance analysts, compliance teams and traders whose job is to catch the next one. Each episode takes one case (front running, spoofing, benchmark rigging, insider trading) and walks through exactly how it worked: the trades, the timestamps, the recorded calls, and the red flags that were there all along. No hype, no speculation. Every number traces back to DOJ filings, trial exhibits and court opinions.

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