Former Deutsche Bank traders James Vorley and Cedric Chanu, convicted of spoofing, suffered a heavy blow on Wednesday at the Illinois Northern District Court. The Honorable John J. Tharp, Jr. denied the traders’ motions for acquittal or a new trial.

The Judge has yet to issue an opinion on the matter, so no arguments for the ruling were given.

The sentencing hearing in this case will be held on Monday, June 21, 2021 at 10:00 a.m.

Let’s recall that, in September 2020, Vorley and Chanu were convicted of three counts and seven counts, respectively, of wire fraud affecting a financial institution. The traders allegedly engaged in a scheme to defraud other traders on the Commodity Exchange Inc., which was run by the CME Group. The defendants defrauded other traders by placing fraudulent orders that they did not intend to execute in order to create the appearance of false supply and demand and to induce other traders to trade at prices, quantities, and times that they otherwise would not have traded.

As FX News Group has reported, Vorley and Chanu have pushed for acquittal. Their main argument is that the government’s opposition “fails to address most of the context of trading on an anonymous electronic exchange, which allows for all kinds of conduct that could be characterized as “deceptive.”

Vorley and Chanu stress that the trading was conducted on an anonymous exchange, where traders were permitted to trade on both sides of the market, and cancellations occurred all the time within milliseconds. The exchange also allowed traders to misrepresent actual supply and demand by using icebergs or to trade invisibly by placing immediate-or-cancel orders.

In this type of trading traders may have tried to guess at the subjective intent of other traders. However, the orders themselves did not communicate anything beyond an intention to trade at the prices and quantities specified if they were executed before they were cancelled.

Apparently, the Court did not find the defendants’ arguments convincing.