There are a lot of good options and I’m not prepared to make a definitive choice at this time, but I can at least say that one of my favorite recent financial crooks is David Miller, the doofus who put a fat suit on his finger, bought 1.6 million instead of 1.6 thousand Apple shares, and brought down Rochdale Securities. His story is nearing its sad conclusion:
David Miller, an institutional sales trader who lives in Rockville Centre, N.Y., has agreed to a partial settlement of the SEC’s charges. He also pleaded guilty today in a parallel criminal case.
The SEC alleges that Miller misrepresented to Rochdale Securities LLC that a customer had authorized the Apple orders and assumed the risk of loss on any resulting trades. The customer order was to purchase just 1,625 shares of Apple stock, but Miller instead entered a series of orders totaling 1.625 million shares at a cost of almost $1 billion. Miller planned to share in the customer’s profit if Apple’s stock profited, and if the stock decreased he would claim that he erred on the size of the order. The stock wound up decreasing after an earnings announcement later that day, and Rochdale was forced to cease operations in the wake of covering the losses suffered from the rogue trades.
The phrase “planned to share in the customer’s profit” is a little vague, and when we first talked about Miller I assumed that he was hoping to claim a fat finger either way and just keep the profits for Rochdale. Nope – Miller’s customer was in on the plan. From the criminal complaint: Read more »
