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Comment by jcgrillo

13 hours ago

Maybe I'm making an incorrect assumption, but I assumed the information was already classified. He was betting on an outcome of a planned military operation based on his knowledge of those plans. My assumption is that information is super closely guarded, and likely classified at a high level. Telegraphing your invasion plans is generally not something you do unless you want disaster, right?

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jcgrillo

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enoint  13 hours ago

Yeah the DoJ proclaims,

“Our Office will continue to hold accountable those who misuse confidential or classified information in a way that undermines and exploits our national security.”

But isn’t wire fraud harder to prove than leaking classified facts?

  • Tangurena2  2 hours ago

    > But isn’t wire fraud harder to prove than leaking classified facts?

    No. From the Justice Department's own criminal resource manual:

    > the four essential elements of the crime of wire fraud are:

    > (1) that the defendant voluntarily and intentionally devised or participated in a scheme to defraud another out of money;

    > (2) that the defendant did so with the intent to defraud;

    > (3) that it was reasonably foreseeable that interstate wire communications would be used; and

    > (4) that interstate wire communications were in fact used

    https://www.justice.gov/archives/jm/criminal-resource-manual...

    Generally, to be successfully prosecuted for a crime, the prosecutor has to show that each and every "element" of the crime has to have happened. On the above page, there were 3 different court precedents who ruled what elements that the prosecutor needed to prove were in those cases.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Element_(criminal_law)#

  • bostik  10 hours ago

    Unless the prosecution can prove that the trades meaningfully moved the market prices, it's probably going to be really hard to use the term "leaking".

    I can't shake the feeling that there may be political reasons to not even attempt that angle. What legal precedent would it set if a judge actually ruled on that and the prosecution won? Which entities within the government would be financially inconvenienced?

    • burningChrome  10 hours ago

      So in prediction markets I've heard a lot of times people will collaborate in order to make certain predictions pay off higher sums by having more people put money on a certain bet.

      Is it true with these markets the more people bet on a specific day and time, the value will increase more, increasing the overall payout? If that is true, I wonder if they're looking at anybody else helping place the bets or a group of people trying to wager a higher amount of money to increase the return?

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