Partner Noah Solowiejczyk spoke with ABC News shortly after the arrest of a U.S. soldier who allegedly used his access to classified government information to place profitable bets in prediction markets related to the ouster of Nicolás Maduro.
It’s the first such set of charges in the relatively new world of prediction markets. Solowiejczyk noted that, while prosecutors have the tools to charge government officials for insider trading now, they may face a "learning curve" when it comes to explaining to a jury how the markets work.
"The Commodities Exchange Act deals with a situation like this. There's a particular provision ... that actually prohibits employees or agents of the federal government from trading on confidential government information that they learn,” said Solowiejczyk, a former federal prosecutor in the Southern District of New York who charged the first-ever crypto insider trading case. "A major undertaking for the government would be distilling and simplifying what happened so that the jury can understand it. That's often one of the challenges for the government in these cases that involve new technology that jurors may not be familiar with."
Read the full story at ABC News.