It’s been said that insider trading happens all the time – they just never get caught. Whether it’s open but often private fields of country clubs or “overhearing” a conversation between friends in a loud bar, the metaphorical and literal Wall Street will find ways. Case in point, a Goldman Sachs employee has been indicted of insider trainer after using Xbox 360 chat to pass tips to his circle of friends.
Apparently, the group ended up making a cool $400,000 as a result of the tips, with the analyst boldly claiming “there’s no tracing” that happens on the Xbox Live chat on the seventh-generation console.
It’s safe to say that the 26-year-old didn’t really think things through when he said that.
According to Bloomberg, the FBI charged Anthony Viggiano and his alleged co-conspirator, Christopher Salamone, with securities fraud, on September 28. Salamone has since pleaded guilty to using his former position at the industry-leading banking form to profit with Salamone and others.
The FBI is claiming that the two were childhood friends and Salamone used the information fed to him by Viggiano on Microsoft’s gaming platform to profit off the shares bought from companies like Atlas Technical Consultant, Maxar Technologies, and Syneous Health.
If we’re being honest, it’s pretty clever to try and use older technology, like the original 2005 console, to commit crimes. At least, going by their logic, its outdated system would make anyone believe that it’d be more private than, let’s say, an Xbox One, which was released in 2013, or the Xbox Series S/X, which came out in 2020. It’s still unclear if Viggiano was correct in his assumptions, or if the FBI got ahold of incriminating evidence from their chats. It’s possible that Salamone confessed after the FBI made it seem like they were already onto them and they only confirmed the contents of their audio chats after the fact.
In any case, what’s clear is that the crime doesn’t pay, and if you do plan on committing something illegal, it may be the best idea to communicate somewhere that you’re 100% sure can’t be traced, not that we’re condoning it.
As for the Xbox 360, Microsoft has confirmed in the past that it will continue supporting the Xbox 360 indefinitely, so if you’ve been living under a rock for over a decade, you can still use the best-selling Xbox console to, at the very least, talk to your friends.
Good luck buying games for your Xbox 360 online though. Microsoft is shutting down its digital store next year.
Speaking of the Xbox, the company recently saw many of its upcoming plans leaked online, including a new controller as well as new variants of the Xbox Series S/X. Phil Spencer insists that this is just the tip of the iceberg, but it remains to be seen if the Xbox head is just trying to save face or if the Xbox really has larger plans for the future.
