Trader spared jail for triggering US stock crash
A US judge has sentenced a British maths whiz-turned-futures trader who helped trigger a US stock market “flash crash” from his parents’ suburban London house to a year’s home confinement
Navinder Singh Sarao, who lives with in Hounslow, west London, was spared a prison term after prosecutors praised his co-operation and said his crimes were unmotivated by greed.
Government prosecutors and defence lawyers described the 41-year-old as autistic in memos filed before sentencing in Chicago federal court. They highlighted his ability to spot numerical patterns in split seconds, saying he regarded trading as a video game in which the object was to compile points, not money.
The sudden fall of shares on May 6, 2010 earned Sarao nearly $1m and temporarily wiped billions off the value of publicly traded companies.
Despite earning $70m (£54m) as a trader over several years, Sarao often ate at McDonald’s using discount coupons.
His priciest purchase as a multimillionaire was a secondhand Volkswagen that cost under £8,000. His modest lifestyle has altered little from his days as an active trader, living today on benefits in the UK.
Before US District Judge Virginia Kendall imposed a sentence, Sarao apologised to those he harmed with his market manipulation, and he expressed remorse for the trauma his prosecution put his family through.
“I will never do anything illegally again,” he said.
Defence lawyer Roger Burlingame described his client as a “singularly sunny, childlike, guileless, trusting person who is instantly beloved by all who encounter him, including the FBI agents and prosecutors”.
Before his indictment, Sarao lost millions in assets to fraudsters who found him uniquely gullible and easy to cheat. He has lived in the same small room with his parents in Hounslow since childhood, rarely venturing out, in part due to his inability to complete the simplest everyday tasks.