Ex-DBS Vickers trader jailed 16 weeks in Singapore’s first spoofing case

SINGAPORE — A former trader at DBS Group Holdings’ brokerage unit was sentenced to 16 weeks in jail after being convicted in Singapore’s first criminal spoofing case.

Dennis Tey Thean Yang, 33, was given the sentence on Wednesday (March 22). The former DBS Vickers Securities (Singapore) broker had pleaded guilty to eight of 23 charges, including attempts to artificially move prices through fraudulent securities orders and misusing other people’s trading accounts without consent. He made a profit of S$30,239 from October 2012 to January 2013.

“It is in the interest of the community to root out spoofing to ensure that the financial markets are genuine,” District Judge Jasvender Kaur said. “If such misconduct is not efficiently deterred, then the manipulators would be protected at the expense of the market participants whom the law is supposed to protect.”

Tey is the first person to come before a Singapore court for spoofing, which involves entering fake orders designed to fool others into thinking prices are poised to rise or fall. Prosecutors asked the judge to send a strong signal to deter copycats. The case was the first to be jointly prosecuted by the Monetary Authority of Singapore and the white-collar crime police.

Mr Adrian Wee, Tey’s lawyer, said in court his client would appeal the jail sentence.

Deputy Public Prosecutor Kwek Chin Yong had sought a jail term of as long as six months, while Mr Wee asked for a fine.

FAKE ORDERS

Tey tried to manipulate prices of so-called contracts for differences, where investors can profit from the price fluctuations of underlying assets without actually owning them, according to court papers. After purchasing the contracts, he would send orders in the underlying securities, which he would then delete.

Tey’s trades had no market impact, and it wasn’t the sophisticated scheme that prosecutors made it out to be, his lawyer had said. Tey stopped trading when he realised his strategy, formulated through observation, might be unlawful, Wee said.

The former broker has been fired from at least two jobs since leaving DBS Vickers in March 2014, according to his lawyer. DBS Vickers said it had cooperated with a probe into Tey’s activities and boosted controls to mitigate against similar situations. BLOOMBERG