A former trader at DBS Group Holdings Ltd’s brokerage unit
on Friday was convicted by a Singapore court for spoofing the securities market
in the city’s first such criminal case.
Dennis Tey Thean Yang, 33, pleaded guilty to eight of the 23
charges he faced including his attempts to artificially move prices through
fraudulent securities orders and misusing other people’s trading accounts
without consent. Tey was a broker at DBS Vickers Securities (Singapore) Pte
when he committed the offenses over four months in late 2012 and early 2013. He
made a profit of S$30,239 ($21,310).
Regulators and exchanges are stepping up scrutiny of market
misconduct and Tey’s case is the first by the Monetary Authority of Singapore
and the white-collar crime police since they banded together in 2015 to probe
offenses. Singapore Exchange Ltd., which runs the city’s securities and
derivatives venue, last month said it would focus on cases that threaten market
integrity after punishing traders for false trading.
In the U.S., Citigroup Inc. was ordered to pay $25 million
for spoofing U.S. Treasury futures market and a trader named Michael Coscia was
sentenced last year to three years in prison for the illegal technique.
Deputy Public Prosecutor Kwek Chin Yong called Tey’s scheme
sophisticated, saying it was one that wasn’t easy to pull off. The prosecution
sought a jail term of as long as six months.
"This is one of the hardest fraud cases to be executed
by one person," he said. “We can’t encourage this sort of behavior to
continue gaming the system.”
According to court papers, Tey tried to manipulate prices of
so-called contracts for differences, where investors can profit from the price
fluctuations of underlying assets without actually owning them. After
purchasing the CFDs, he would make fake orders in the underlying securities
which he would then delete.
The trades, which involved underlying securities in
companies such as Samudera Shipping Line Ltd. and Asia Power Corp., had little
or no market impact and Tey’s orders were ultimately not filled, his lawyer
Adrian Wee said. The trading strategy was formulated through observation as
well as trial and error and Tey stopped trading when he realized it might be
unlawful, the lawyer added.
"This was one guy, in a room, in front of his
computer," Wee said, adding that Tey’s actions weren’t as
sophisticated as what the prosecution had made it out to be. "These trades
do not require special access or for one to be a licensed individual."
Tey, a Malaysian national, left DBS Vickers in March
2014 and was arrested in May 2015. He will be sentenced on March 22.
In a statement, DBS said it had zero tolerance for criminal
behavior and cooperated with the probe into Tey’s activities. "We continue
to be vigilant, and today, controls have been enhanced to mitigate against
similar situations," it added.
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