A federal jury on Wednesday acquitted a former trader for the Swiss bank UBS of charges related to market manipulation, dealing a blow to a Justice Department effort to crack down on a Wall Street practice known as “spoofing.”
Prosecutors accused the former trader, Andre Flotron, of trying to move market prices for precious metals by making offers on electronic trading systems to buy or sell gold, silver and other financial products and then quickly deleting those offers before anyone could accept them.
But after only a few hours of deliberation, a jury in United States District Court in the District of Connecticut rejected their theory, according to Mr. Flotron's lawyer Marc L. Mukasey.