I am pretty much sure that the CIA has given an insider information to the specific target who is eventually confronted by them for the illegal trading. Thereafter, the spy has offered an immunity to be exchanged with working for them as their asset.
This tactic is unique to the financial investment community, but if necessary, there should be other systematic methodologies to create their assets in different industries. I was one of their targets for this insider trading plot and can confirm which insider information was orchestrated by them.
After all, I was not framed by their strategy, though it might be obliged to write why there were so many people trading illegally. At least in those days, there were a plenty of insider information floated in the market. However, I had not known the detail as I declined to get an insider information when they leaked it to me. Therefore, I was basically kicked out of their information circle and had no idea how they were really connected.
Having said that, I knew there were weird movements of the stock prices and had also known some of the players who were selling the insider information. In the current law, their conducts were to be illegal, though I could not have confirmed they were under the law before the revision in 2014.
There has been much information, the majority of which are legal, even though they are useful. It is more like an insight rather than a concrete information, but if you get that useful information from the specific person, you shall trust this guy in the end.
It is a natural psychological process, but the CIA has availed this path as well. They at first provide nonillegal useful information to win the trust. Once they build up the faith, they are going to escalate to tell an insider information.
I declined their instigation at this time moment, hence I had no idea how the relationship went deeper from here. Although, I assume there should be a revelation of the crime and an offer working as their asset. Or, this individual might be untouched for the time being until really necessary to avail this guy in the future.
In any way, if you are buried in the insider information, your sense will be paralyzed to discern legal from illegal. It originally started from the usual information escalated into the illegal insider information, though you might not realize when you started to avail an insider information.
In my case, I severely checked whether it was legal or not, even for the information categorized in the gray area. It is not a normal procedure as the majority of investors did not ask the detail, as its search might be ended up with the insider information.
Although, if you would like to protect yourself, you had better ask where the information comes from and do not trade with its information until confirmed as legal. This legal line is the only way to prevent you from an escalation of the illegal activity.
If you stay in the legal area, there is a zero risk down into the illegal, as there are enough room for the gray area in between. Although, if you believe you can get a lucrative return from the insider information, you are easily framed by this trap.
In this world, everything has a risk and return, which is true to the insider information, which is just too skewed to realize. Once the insider trading is found, it is categorized as a crime and its cost is too high, but it is not easily found by the financial authority.
This is not an issue of the normal distribution, which is classified as a risk of the extreme event. Therefore, if you assume this is a problem of the normal risk and return, you cannot realize how dangerous the insider trading is.
Furthermore, the extremal risk is usually underestimated, which holds true to the insider trading. All in all, you had better consider a legal risk for any transactions, otherwise you might conduct an illegal trading sloppily.
When the intelligence agency would like to frame you for the insider trading, they definitely start from the legal information with a quite useful insight, which is escalated into the illegal at some point. This escalation is so natural and you might assume an additional risk looks like quite low, but there is a tremendous division between legal and illegal. It is basically underestimated but you had better realize this fact, which is the only way you are going away from their trap.
Statistically speaking, even if the risk is quite minimum for each transaction, its expected value should be accumulated for multiple cases. It is purely wrong to assume each event is always independent. The risk here is a legal one, which you are exposed to all the time, notionally accumulated.
Your illegal transaction should be revealed in the end, even though the risk for each time looks quite low.
Additionally, the spy should confront these trades in the end, if you are framed by them. Then, you need to choose either working as their asset or being arrested. That is the normal procedure of the CIA and other intelligence agency.
There is another important fact. It is a fact written in the government paper that there are many intelligence assets working in the financial industry.