If you read or hear about people in New York who have been accused of insider trading, you might wonder what exactly leads to these types of allegations. In its most basic form, insider trading involves a person benefitting by trading stocks based upon knowledge gained due to a privileged position of some sort. Often, these situations involve a person who works for a company and who has access to company information that those outside the company would not have.
Interestingly, The New York Times highlights that in the United States the laws that deal with these offenses do not even directly reference insider trading. This gap may well cause a lot of confusion among defendants and potentially even open the door for people to fall prey to such charges unknowingly.
Laws instead only speak of fraud in more general terms, leaving prosecution and defense teams to infer meanings and pursue cases based upon individual interpretation. It may well be that many of the people facing criminal charges of insider trading honestly did not intend to engage in illegal activities but that the vague nature of the laws found them facing such charges. It is unclear if there is any potential for change in this area on the horizon, making it important for people to have good legal counsel on their side.
If you would like to learn more about the laws surrounding insider trading or other related charges and how to defend yourself against them, please feel free to visit the criminal fraud charges page of our New York white collar crime defense website.
