Money Stuff: Don’t Pay Gambling Debts By Insider Trading

“Six Charged in Silicon Valley Insider Trading Ring” is the headline on this Securities and Exchange Commission news release. (There is a related criminal case.) It is perhaps less of a Silicon Valley Insider Trading Ring than I had hoped. It’s not, like, senior product managers at Facebook and Google and Apple all tipping each other, but why would it be. Only two of the six people in the ring worked at tech companies. Still it has its charm:

“High school teacher and bookmaker” is just an A+ job description. Also I like that the teacher/bookie allegedly passed some illegal inside information on to a guy who owed him money, so the guy could get the money to pay him back: “Sood owed Wylam a six-figure gambling debt, and Wylam knew that Sood could use profits generated from insider trading to pay off at least part of that debt,” says the SEC complaint. But then Sood got some inside information of his own and allegedly passed it back to his bookie/creditor: “Sood also owed Wylam a six-figure gambling debt,” the complaint repeats, “and Sood expected that, in return for providing inside information, Wylam would forgive a portion of the debt.” I don’t know, man, I feel like both of those things can’t be true. If Sood could pay Wyman in insider-trading tips, then he shouldn’t be able to pay him off with money from insider trading on Wyman’s own tips? The whole economy of insider trading to pay gambling debts is a little murky to me.