United States v. Coscia

100 F. Supp. 3d 653, 2015 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 50344, 2015 WL 1805955
District Court, N.D. Illinois·Decided April 16, 2015·No. Case No. 14 CR 551·Published·Cited by 3 cases

Opinion

MEMORANDUM OPINION AND ORDER

Harry D. Leinenweber, Judge, United States District Court

Before the Court is Defendant Michael Coscia’s (“Coscia”) Motion to Dismiss the Indictment (the “Indictment”) charging him with six (6) counts of “spoofing” under 7 U.S.C. §§ 6c(a)(5)(C) and 13(a)(2) and six (6) counts of .commodities fraud under 18 U.S.C. § 1348 [ECF No. 27], For the reasons stated herein, the Motion is denied.

I. BACKGROUND

Coscia began his career as a commodities futures trader in 1988. Since 2007, Coscia served as the principal of Panther Energy Trading LLC, a high-frequency futures trading firm.

According to the Indictment, in August 2011, Coscia developed and implemented a high-frequency trading strategy that allowed him to enter and cancel large-volume orders in a matter of milliseconds. (Indictment ¶3.) Allegedly, this strategy moved prices in the market, such that Coscia was able to purchase contracts at lower prices, or sell contracts at higher prices, than the prices available in the market before the large-volume orders were entered and canceled. (Id.) Coscia would then “repeat[] his strategy in the opposite direction,” reselling the low-price contracts he purchased at a high price, or buying back the high-price contracts he sold at a low price. (Id.) The Indictment charges that Coscia implemented his strategy “to create a false impression regarding the number of contracts available in the market, and to fraudulently induce other market participants to react to the deceptive market information that he created.” (Id.) Coscia reaped approximately $1.5 million in profits as a result of the alleged scheme. (Id.)

To carry out the scheme, Coscia enlisted the help of a computer programmer to design two computer programs, Flash Trader and Quote Trader. (Id. ¶ 4.) Cos-cia employed the programs in 17 different CME Group markets and three different markets on the ICE Futures Europe exchange. (Id. ¶ 5.) The programs detected the conditions in which Coscia’s strategy worked best (id. ¶ 6), and operated through a system of trade orders and quote orders (id. ¶¶ 8-9).

On one side of the market, the programs would place a bona fide “trade order” to be filled. (Id. ¶ 8.) On the other side, they would place several layers of large-volume “quote orders” to manipulate market conditions. (Id. ¶ 9.) The quote orders, however, were canceled within a fraction of a second. (Id.) Once Coscia filled the first trade order, he would enter a second trade order on the other side of the market, again employ misleading quote orders, and ultimately “profit on the difference in price between the first and second trade orders.” (Id. ¶ 12.) The entire series of transactions would take place in a matter of milliseconds. (Id. ¶ 13.)

II. LEGAL STANDARD

A legally sufficient indictment is one that “(1) states all the elements of the crime charged; (2) adequately informs the [656] defendant of the nature of the charges so that he may prepare a defense; and (3) allows the defendant to plead the judgment as a bar to any future prosecutions.” United States v. White, 610 F.3d 956, 958-59 (7th Cir.2010) (citing Fed. R. Crim. P. 7(c)(1)). The Court reviews an indictment on its face, id. accepting all of its allegations as true. United States v. Moore, 563 F.3d 583, 586 (7th Cir.2009). The Court does not consider whether any of the Indictment’s charges have been established by evidence, or whether the Government will ultimately be able to prove its case. White, 610 F.3d at 959. “Indictments are reviewed on a practical basis and in their entirety, rather than in a hypertechnical manner.” United States v. Smith, 230 F.3d 300, 305 (7th Cir.2000) (citations and internal quotations omitted). In general, an indictment that tracks the words of a statute to state the elements crime is acceptable, provided that it states sufficient facts to place a defendant on notice of the specific conduct at issue. White, 610 F.3d at 958-59.

III. ANALYSIS

The Indictment charges Coscia under two relatively new statutory provisions: (1) the “anti-spoofing” provision of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010, which amended the Commodity Exchange Act’s (“CEA”) “Prohibited Transactions” section; and (2) the Fraud Enforcement and Recovery Act, which, in 2009, expanded the anti-fraud provisions of 18 U.S.C. § 1348 to apply to commodities futures trading. Coscia seeks to dismiss the Indictment in its entirety, arguing that (1) the CEA’s anti-spoofing provision is void for vagueness, and (2) the commodities fraud counts are legally invalid and similarly vague.

A. Spoofing

The “anti-spoofing” provision of the CEA prohibits “any trading, practice, or conduct [that] ... is of the character of, or is commonly known to the trade as, ‘spoofing’ (bidding or offering with the intent to cancel the bid or offer before execution).” 7 U.S.C. § 6c(a)(5)(C). Knowing violation of the anti-spoofing provision is a felony. Id. § 13(a)(2). Coscia argues that the anti-spoofing provision is unconstitutionally vague because it fails to offer any ascertainable standard that separates spoofing from legitimate trade practices such as partial-fill orders (larger-than-necessary orders entered to ensure a sufficient quantity is obtained) and stop-loss orders (orders that are programmed to execute only when the market reaches a certain price). (See, Def.’s Mem., ECF No. 28, at 17.) Coscia also notes that at the time of the alleged transactions, only limited interpretative guidance on the meaning of “spoofing” was available from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (the “CFTC”).

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United States v. Coscia, 100 F. Supp. 3d 653, 2015 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 50344, 2015 WL 1805955 (N.D. Ill. 2015).

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