Tom Hardin

Like how much does the SEC catch or the FBI catch?

The latest...

Cause I speak at schools.

I know professors who research this stuff, like, okay, here's what's happening in the market.

How much are they catching?

And the latest research is like, they only catch about 15% of what actually happens, even though they can bring about 50 cases a year.

So one a week, they're not really, they're not catching all of it.

Well, that's not what they can only do, but that's about if you look every year how many cases are brought, that's about what it is.

And I think the challenge with the SEC is they have like a $2 billion enforcement budget.

And you think about all the bad actors in the world combined have billions and billions of dollars more in terms of how they can do the bad acts.

And so you read the 50 cases now, and it's always like, oh, I can see this person had this information.

They called their uncle in the stock market he traded.

Probably took the SEC five minutes.

The more professional cases, the more sort of organized crime is happening.

And I think the SEC, just as a regulator, overworked, underpaid, under-resourced, they don't have sort of the resources to bring down some of these major networks that are happening just because of a budget or not really a focus by them to bring down these bigger networks.

And so what's happening now is it's like more organized crime where they'll hack a company's website, maybe through phishing, get through an employee, and then start trading that company's stock around the earnings announcements or the takeovers.

And so it's a more complicated case for the regulators to investigate.

And I think just it's sort of like, all right, we can get this guy every week who's making $46,000, knucklehead, scare him, and then get that.

And the average discouragement by the SEC in these cases is $58,000.

So they're not catching that.