http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/06/opinion/the-supreme-court-revisits-insider-trading.html 2016-10-06 10:24:20 The Supreme Court Revisits Insider Trading The justices should not soften a 33-year-old ruling on what constitutes illegal securities fraud. === Illegal insider trading goes on every day, and it is often difficult to detect and prosecute. But it is a fraud that harms public confidence in securities markets and unfairly disadvantages investors who are not privy to the confidential information. On Wednesday, the Supreme Court Federal law does not define insider trading — For the most part, the lower federal courts have applied that standard without trouble. But a recent disagreement over the meaning of “personal benefit” has brought the issue back to the justices. The case now before the court is an appeal by Bassam Salman, a Chicago man who made hundreds of thousands of dollars after Michael Kara tipped him off to coming corporate mergers and acquisitions that were not yet public. Mr. Kara had gotten the tips from his brother, Maher, an investment banker at Citigroup and Mr. Salman’s future brother-in-law. The men took steps to cover their tracks. In 2013, Mr. Salman was convicted of insider trading and sentenced to three years in prison. Mr. Salman wants his conviction overturned because, he argues, Maher Kara did not receive any direct financial benefit from providing the tips. He relies on But in Mr. Salman’s case, as the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit If Mr. Salman’s conviction is overturned, any insider could freely disclose confidential information to relatives who could then trade on it, and so long as the insider didn’t ask for any money in return, no one would be liable. In the real world, of course, a personal benefit, particularly among relatives, can take many forms besides money. As Justice Stephen Breyer The Supreme Court