These things just used to warrant a and slap and a fine.

Front running is the act of hearing your clients request a trade of large size and then jumping in first to jack up the price.  Only then is the client's order placed at the higher price.  The act of buying the client's order jacks up the price again at which time the front runner sells for a assured profit.  A group of traders from HSBC is about to go down in a fiery ball according to this Bloomberg report.  They got a certain Mark Johnson of HSBC on tape tipping off his front running network.  This is a bona fide conspiracy.  A few years ago the company would have paid a fine and nobody would have gone to jail but those days are over.  Mark John and his corrupt crew are headed for the slam and in order to save their own skins you can bet they will roll over on whatever bigger fish they know about.  The company is not shielding them here.  So they are now on their own to cut side deals or rot for years far away from their comfy Wall St lie-fstyles.

Maybe it will be this case or maybe it will be another one but sooner or later a big bank is going to let the wrong person, you know, the one with the little black book insurance policy, slip under the bus and that person is going to play his criminal get out of jail free card.  It's coming folks.  The entire system is just dripping with corruption waiting to make the career of prosecutors.  Instead of not wanting to hear about it during the liberal upswing because of "don't rock the boat reasons", the herd will now back the prosecution of these criminals because so many in the herd now have nothing left to lose.