did he really put plenty of liquidity out there? His orders were 3,4,5 ticks off market and were moved lockstep with the inside price. Even if a couple of levels were swiped plenty of time for his algo to cancel them. His orders whilst active were a substantial % of the book.
The powers that be could make spoofing effectively illegal by charging cancel fees or by requiring a minimum live time for each order, yet that doesn't happen. If they aren't going to make spoofing illegal via market structure, then they should make it fully legal. This middle gray area is bullcrap. I really don't understand why someone didn't figure out what this guy was doing and profit off of him by picking up on his tell-tale order signatures. Let the market sort it out via profit and loss if the regulators don't have the balls to do it themselves.
I think this boy made more damage to the powerful club of really big spoofers, HFT's and other crooks. I think they ordered to XXXXX to do something about this kid, that was making their business difficult.
https://www.sec.gov/news/studies/2010/marketevents-report.pdf First read pages 2 -7. They speak about a big fund and HFT's.
Only if found innocent of the US charges. A slap on the wrist by the UK judicial system for tax avoidance - in reality a short custodial sentence at worst, versus a potentially inhumanely long stint in a US prison.
And knowing how "honest" American justice can be, especially for non-Americans, he might indeed have a big problem. It is like having a fight with the mafia; even if you are 100% innocent you will lose. The hidden agenda is all that counts, not the justice. Read the report from 2010 from the SEC, and compare it with what they accuse this UK trader from now. Two complete different studies that contradict each other, made by the same American authorities. The first study started from facts and lead to conclusions. The second report started from the conclusions that should be reached, and then adapted the facts so that they could lead to the expected conclusions.