IT SEEMS THAT BANKS AND TRADING FIRMS CAN BE REMARKABLY QUICK TO CATCH MANIPULATION AND FRAUDULENT ACTIVITY WHEN IT PERTAINS TO THEIR OWN ASSETS.
It took BP all of 100 days to catch, corroborate, and file a suit against its trader who was in the process of jumping ship to another firm.
Anyone who understands trading firms and traders (especially flow traders) understands the following:
Traders have 1 client, their firm. And when they decide to leave that firm, their allegiance to that soon to be ex-client disappears.
And when your firm has a culture that rewards creative and possibly unethical behavior, you are a potential target once someone declares free agency. Thank goodness BP was so good at protecting its assets. They seem to have been on top of it from day 1. Like they had a profile for how these things were done.
If only they could use that profiling, technology, and self policing to protect their clients as well from those same predatory traders. But we understand. It takes years to find recorded calls and internal messages to protect the integrity of the firm and the markets in which it trades.
It would be a huge speculative leap to think the mentality that leads an employee to attempt to defraud his firm would be somehow pervasive in dealing with his clients daily.
Seriously. Who believes that executives do not know their employees strategies to generate revenue for the firm? Does anyone really want to catch them? Here's how. Follow the promotions.
In the meantime, enjoy the idiocy that is a flow trader trying to spoof his own company.
full complaint HERE
Don't do this.
by Matt Levine
Joseph Giljum worked on an oil trading desk for BP Products North America Inc. He negotiated a job offer with a competitor, and discussed his move with a former BP trader named James Chrystal who now works at that competitor. BP claims that he schemed with Chrystal to steal a bunch of confidential trading information from BP and bring it to the competitor. You are not supposed to do that. But, according to BP's complaint, Giljum had a cunning plan to avoid detection:
On March 13, 2017, Giljum exchanged text messages with Chrystal regarding “key” information Chrystal wanted Giljum to obtain, including BP’s highly valuable and proprietary information.
That same day, Giljum conducted Google searches on his personal computer that included: “permanently delete iphone texts” and “permanently delete imessages iphone” and “delete all from icloud” and “test if message deleted” and “whip [sic] icloud” amongst others.
The Trader was quite confident his plan worked it would seem. In fact drug abuse could be the alibi based on this chat:
On April 11, 2017, Giljum and Chrystal exchanged the following email messages:
Giljum: “Will email from here on out. But text aren’t even on my icloud so nothing to trace, already looked into it. Wouldn’t send it otherwise.”
Chrystal: “just don’t text me that ...” “i [sic] don’t want to get sued” “thats [sic] toeing close to the line”
Giljum: “All good will just move to email from here on out.”
Chrystal: “paranoid as it is. on top of that, smoke a lot of weed. makes me even more paranoid.”
Chrystal: “just paranoid is all”
Giljum: “Don’t you go tweaking out on me. Will put together a proper list this week to make sure we got it all covered before I pull the plug.”
The JPG file contains subfolders named for Giljum’s family members and dogs (“Bean,” “Elsa,” “Grace,” “Mei,” “Sharon,” and “Sophia”). However, the actual files contained in these subfolders contain BP’s highly confidential information, including many proprietary financial models. Giljum used family names to designate the “JPG” subfolders to create a false sense that the subfolders contained pictures of his family. This was a ruse designed to conceal the true nature of the subfolders.
He then allegedly uploaded the files from his work computer to his Amazon cloud account, downloaded them to his personal tablet, and "deleted all of the files in his Amazon Cloud account, apparently in an effort to cover his tracks."
Levine Sums it Up:
But if you run a bank or trading firm or really any modern business, one of your biggest risks is employees sending each other dumb emails that say "ha ha ha it's a good thing no one is reading this email, since we are doing lots of illegal stuff!" And I feel like these guys would be a perfect cautionary tale. "We used to be high-powered oil traders. But then we sent each other emails boasting about how no one would read our emails. And now everyone will laugh at us forever. Don't be like us."
We would add this:
Please stop pretending that Corporations are not familiar with the culture they have created. It took 90 days if that to catch internal fraud. Meanwhile global energy and Precious Metals clients have been in the desert for 30 years waiting for justice.
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