I thought about that. I would think if the account can't be traced back to an individual or a firm, ie its some kind of three times removed LLC in Cayman funded with Bitcoins or such... they'll bust the trade. Perhaps, but the FBI gets a warrant and they go forensic on every electron you've sent in the last 6 months, and who your fraternity brother's next door neighbor was 5 years ago.......you better have done a damn good job of leaving no trail. Almost impossible these days. That was no random trade... and I suspect Equifax is going to be made a whipping boy on various fronts. This trade is merely one of those fronts. They're gonna be a sacrificial lamb. Which is great imo. F em.
I see those things almost every day, and I'm not surprised anymore. Here is another example: The market expected ORCL to report earnings on a week of Sep.22, and options have been priced accordingly. On Sep.06 they conformed earnings on week of Sep.15. Next day Sep.15 options more than tripled, to reflect the new earnings date. Guess what? Someone purchased half million worth of 51 calls, making around million dollars overnight. Coincidence? I don't think so.
They need to be put in jail. They stole my property (credit data) and then they didn't protect it so bad guys now have it. How much money will they cost the IRS who has to resolve fraudulent refunds? How many innocent people will go to jail for someone's crime? (Yes, this happens in 3% of identity theft...not high percentage but multiply that by millions!) And what do they offer? 1 year credit monitoring -- ONE YEAR, and if you do, you waive your right to any jury trial and class action, AND there is no guarantee or help if you are in trouble. This is just MONITORING.
I haven't ever heard of a trade busted because of fraud on the part of the originator like this, or did you mean "busted" like go to jail vs "busted" like reversed the trade? You bring up a very interesting point though, does the seller of the put options in this case have recourse in civil court to recover their losses if it does turn out the buyer of the puts was acting illegally? As an aside, it's interesting that we have this notion that bitcoins are anonymous when the entire history of every bitcoin is an integral part of that bitcoin. Tracing it back to an owner is relatively trivial for law enforcement in almost every case by simply looking at every owner of the coin and then looking at what other transactions that same owner engaged in. Nearly impossible to convert it back to a regular currency and into your hands where you can use it without leaving a trail, plus there's the whole laundering and tax evasion part. At some point it's just a lot easier to make money the legitimate way!
They used to offer a service free to military members where a note was placed in your credit report requiring the potential creditor to call you at the number listed in the report to confirm that you really authorized the credit application. It was pretty much foolproof, although a little bit of a pain because you couldn't get any "instant" credit card approvals because you had to wait for that call back. Seems like a fairly simple option to provide to everyone on the credit agency's part, although the credit issuers probably wouldn't love it.
One would think that it would be in the credit issuer's best interest to verify that they are issuing credit to the person that they think they are. Because if identity theft occurs, doesn't the credit issuer ultimately end up paying for it?
Nope. The debtor/(person with the credit report) pays for it. The credit issuer writes it off as a business loss, and then sells the debt to a 3rd-party collector. It's a bloody racket. All the meanwhile, the credit reporting agency makes money on every single transaction through their network.