A federal jury in Chicago convicted two former merchants of JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s valuable metals desk who had been charged with manipulating gold costs, discovering they used deceptive orders to rig costs.
The convictions are the capstone of a seven-year Justice Division marketing campaign to punish a method of misleading buying and selling in futures markets generally known as spoofing. The rapid-fire technique was prevalent at some Wall Avenue banks earlier than Congress outlawed spoofing in 2010, and continued even after its prohibition, based on prosecutors. JPMorgan paid $920 million in 2020 to settle regulatory and prison costs towards the financial institution over the merchants’ conduct.
