Five months ago, I told you that I had been very closely following the case of John Edmonds, the JP Morgan banker accused of manipulating gold prices lower with gold spoofing behavior, since December of 2018. Mr. Edmonds was scheduled to be sentenced for his crimes at the end of 2018, but before his sentencing, Mr. Edmonds started squealing, so the judge delayed Mr. Edmonds’s sentencing until “no later” than 8 May 2018. Then 8 May 2018 came and went as well, without any sentencing, and it was announced that Mr. Edmonds’s sentencing regarding his gold spoofing activities was further delayed for an additional six months, until June of 2019. When June of 2019 also passed without any sentencing, it was presumed that further delays in sentencing ensued due to Mr. Edmonds’s continued cooperation with the prosecution in fingering other senior bankers at JP Morgan involved in his scheme of gold spoofing and perhaps even the provision of detailed revelations about the methodology of gold spoofing that he and other JP Morgan bankers employed.
There is likely nothing that a criminal senior banker dislikes more than a lower associate ratting them out, and consequently, I speculated that Mr. Edmonds’s continued squealing about his gold spoofing activities may have placed him in line for retaliatory measures. As a trader for thirteen years, Mr. Edmonds was not a neophyte banker at JP Morgan. Still, he testified that more senior bankers at the firm trained him in how to manipulate gold prices lower and that senior advisors at JP Morgan were fully aware and approved of his criminal behavior. Though much of the publicity regarding Mr. Edmonds’s case has been about his gold spoofing and gold price manipulation, Mr. Edmonds also admitted to manipulating silver, palladium and platinum prices from 2009 to 2015.
Assistant Attorney General Brian Benczkowski stated, “For years, John Edmonds engaged in a sophisticated scheme to manipulate the market for precious metals futures contracts for his own gain by placing orders that were never intended to be executed.” This case was of particular interest to me because to this day, I 100% do not believe that this criminal practice has ceased at JP Morgan and at other large global banks. In fact, my patrons for the last 18-months, have received weekly videos in which I repeatedly accurately predicted gold price slams numerous times, sometimes to within just a few dollars of the price slam, which should be an impossible feat to accomplish if bankers were still not manipulating gold prices. Consequently, this practice has likely never stopped simply because the punishment has yet to match the enormity of the committed crime, with judges only levying fines that amount to a fraction of the profits generated from the spoofing activities and no judge yet doling out a punishment of any considerable jail time. With no real threat of serious prison time and with guaranteed profits of multiple times the amount of the levied fines, no disincentive exists in the banking industry to cease manipulation of precious metal prices lower (and higher at times) in futures markets to artificially manufacture ill-gained profits.
Since Mr. Edmonds was not released, after his arrest, with the typical slap on the wrist and a fine that amounted to pennies on the dollars of profits made via the criminal activity, I was truly interested to discover if Mr. Edmonds, or any of his superiors at JP Morgan that were clearly involved in aiding, abetting, and approving of his criminal activities, would be sentenced to significant prison time for the first time in the history of precious metal price manipulation cases. If the FBI pursued this case aggressively, and actually sent a few JP Morgan bankers to a federal penitentiary for at least two to three years, then for the first time in history, such an outcome would have won a substantial victory for all of us that desire fair pricing mechanisms to rule in establishing gold and silver prices all over the world. Serious prison time in a maximum security prison (and not Jeffery Epstein-like preferential treatment of a house arrest) will be the only deterrent to future criminal manipulation of gold and silver prices. Thus, if judges were to hand down significant prison time were to JP Morgan bankers involved in the John Edmonds gold spoofing scheme, such justice would also finally serve as a deterrent to bankers at other large institutions from engaging in similar and illegal gold (and silver) price manipulation schemes as well.
The case of Mr. Edmond could truly be a landmark case in freeing gold and silver pricing behavior from the vice-like grip of corrupt global bankers that restrict prices from moving higher. And it still may be in the future, especially if higher, senior-level bankers at JP Morgan are sentenced to lengthy prison sentences. Though I don’t remain very hopeful that such a positive outcome for humanity will emerge from this case, since such an outcome would be a first in the history of gold and silver price manipulation, the curious case of John Edmonds is still an important case to track until a resolution is determined for this now more than one-year-old case.
