TOPIC: Lukas Kamay – “The worst insider trading case”
At the age of 24 he became one of the most successful traders in Australia.
He turned AU$1.5 million into AU$2.54 million within 25-minutes, trading from a toilet cubicle.
Lukas Kamay seemed to achieve everything at the age of 26 only with a great job at National
Australia Bank in Melbourne, BMW Roadster, and A SALARY OF APPROXIMATELY AU$200,000 PER YEAR.
However, it all crashed down in an AU$7 million insider trading case,
emerging as one of the biggest ever insider trading case in the recent times.
His university friend – Christopher Hill,
who worked with Australian Bureau of Statistics in Canberra accompanied him in his plan.
What was the plan?
Using burner phones, which were registered in other people’s names,
Hill used to jot down the figures on a paper
that could affect currency trades. He would write the figures and put that piece of paper
in his pocket and go out of the building to call Kamay before the data was made public.
Kamay would lock himself into a toilet cubicle in his NAB office and make trades on the foreign
exchange market on the Australian dollar. He was so confident that he knew every dollar movement.
Hill said that their plan was to hit a balance of AU$200,000 in Kamay’s account so that he would
then pay tax on it, leaving them with AU$100,000 to be split in two equal amounts for each of them.
Both Kamay and Hill made their first trade on 12 September 2013, however,
Kamay betrayed both the shareholders and his friend by opening a secret trading account.
He secretly made another AU$7,700 with this second account.
How did Kamay get caught?
In March, police surveillance cameras captured Kamay’s movements,
while he was leaving his workstation and going to the toilet from where he made a huge
trade that turned AU$1 million into AU$2.5 million within roughly 25-minute trade burst.
But his and his friend’s luck ran out when Hill forgot to take his burner phone, thus he had to
call Kamay from his regular phone and the AFP recorded their conversation regarding the trade.
On May 9, 2014, the police conducted raids in Canberra and Melbourne,
when later that year, both Kamay and Hill were found guilty in the Victorian Supreme Court.
Kamay tried to put the scam on Hill, however, Kamay could not succeed and was sentenced
to seven years and three months jail with a non-parole period of four years and six months.
While Kamay had the longest jail sentence in the Australian insider trade history,
Hill got a lesser sentence of three years and three months.
Both are no longer in touch with each other while for Hill, Lukas is no longer a friend.