The Feds are coming
Pop quiz hot shot:
Couple of G-men hammered on your door, huffing and puffing, accusing your low-on-the-totem-pole ass of insider trading.
You let them in, and the performance begins.
Bad cop comes in screaming, messing up your stuff.
Slimeball good cop says to you:
“Maybe we’ll go easy on you if you wear a wire…?”
What do you do? What, do you do?
As most of you probably know by now, the FBI has started their insider trading blitzkrieg with Operation: Get Stevie, and three hedge funds, two of which run by former SAC employees, have already been raided.
Even independent analysts connected to the giant hedge fund have also taken a hit, with 53 year old John Kinnucan getting harassed just outside his own home in Portland.
Accused of passing inside information, Kinnucan, who operates Broadband Research LLC, an independent tech research firm, was visited by the FBI and was asked to wear a wire during his next meeting with “this guy in particular we are after” at SAC.
Midas asked us last week what our stance was on insider trading, but what I want to know is, how would you handle things when the feds come knocking?
Kinnucan had little trouble fighting them off; he even sent warning emails to his clients.
But he’s an independent, and in the career-centric mentality of WSO, things could be a little different.
Picture yourself walking home from the firm of your dreams, tired yet proud from a day’s work.
You then find the feds waiting, and they ask you to play cloak and dagger against your own company.
The place you’ve strived to work for most of your life, the place you’ve worked so hard to get into, and here they are asking you to take it down.
Would you snitch and wear a wire?
Or would you fend them off, knowing it could be the end of your career?
According to something I read one of the feds that was really good at getting bankers to talk did so by cornering them in public and threatening them. If some guy came to my home in the middle of the afternoon and accosted me I think I would tell them to go fuck themselves on principle.
Snitches get stitches. Period.
+1
First rule of fight club...
Wonder if any of the clients he emailed about being approached by the FBI went short financials before the crack down was made public?
That's a tough call. I'll tell you what I will do:
If the police contact me and I know you're guilty, I'm not going to cover for you. Not sure I'll wear a wire, but I sure as heck am going to lawyer up, spill my guts, and offer to testify. Integrity trumps loyalty, and in the long run, it's easier to sleep at night.
If I know you're not guilty or if there's a fairly reasonable doubt about it, I'll tell them to go to hell. McCarthyesque witch hunts suck. And they're made worse by people who name communists that aren't communist.
My goal is to maximize the amount of sleep first my conscience and then the police let me get at night. Careers are never a sure thing, but sleep is. 'Nuff said.
Let's be clear though- unethical and immoral behavior- even bad attitudes about fiduciary responsibilities- don't belong in this industry. That's what makes main street hate us so much and it's part of the reason that Wall Street is shrinking rather than growing right now. If you think someone has done something illegal, you need to do everything ethical to help the regulators. If anybody covered for Bernie Madoff, they have to live with a lot of poor grandmas and grandpas and a couple of suicides on their conscience.
It's good the Fed cleans up the street every once in a while. This levels out the playing field and teaches Idiots to man the fuck up when shit hits the fan. A wire? come one! If you play you pay.
If you cant dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with shit.
Bang a rail off a stripper's silicon valley.
I am too good looking to go to jail.
Wear a wire? No.
Integrity is everything to me. If I knew someone else was in violation, I'd probably take direct measures to protect myself and then report it within the firm. Going external? No, I'm not going to put at risk the viability of other people's careers and that of the entire firm, I'll take it to someone over me and let them handle the headache.
I'd also love to see some fed try to corner me in public. I do my best to inform myself of my rights in any situation, so if some clown in a stuffed shirt is gonna try to browbeat me and cow me with his vindictive, best believe I'll either serve it right back or run circles around him verbally. I'm not one of the blindly biased "fuck tha police" kids, but I really loathe when law enforcement officials abuse their position to get some larger result they want.
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