In the past, I’ve covered this story of JP Morgan gold spoofer John Edmonds on my news site and indicated that I would continue to monitor this story. In fact, you can reference my last post this past February about JP Morgan banker John Edmonds here, as I was most interested in his specific gold spoofing case out of the numerous charged and arrested JP Morgan bankers. Why has my interest been focused on gold spoofing John Edmonds? To begin, John Edmonds, since his arrest in late 2018, has been reportedly working with the feds to reveal the details of his manipulation operation and implicate his fellow bankers in return for a reduction, perhaps significant, in his eventual prison sentence.
Since my last post about this case half a year ago, though Mr. Edmonds was originally scheduled to be sentenced for his crimes in December of 2018, and since then, his sentencing has been postponed four times, from December 2018 to May 2019 to December 2019 to June 2020, with still no sentencing and no word from the US Justice Department of any updates regarding this case other than the repeated provision of a generic explanation that public sentencing could interfere with the ongoing criminal probe. In just a few more months, we will reach two years since the arrest of Mr. Edmonds for gold spoofing with zero resolution to this extremely serious crime.
To refresh your memory, here is a partial list of the charges brought against John Edmonds:
“Commodities fraud [committed in gold futures markets], that is, knowingly and with the intent to defraud, to execute and attempt to execute a scheme and artifice to defraud a person in connection with a commodity for future delivery, namely precious metals futures contracts, in violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 1348(1); c. Commodities price manipulation, that is, knowingly and intentionally to manipulate and attempt to manipulate the price of a commodity for future delivery, namely precious metals futures contracts, on or subject to the rules of registered entities, namely the New York Mercantile Exchange, Inc. (“NYMEX”) and Commodity Exchange, Inc. (“CO MEX”), in violation of Title 7, United States Code, Section 13(a)(2); and d. Spoofing, that is, knowingly to engage in trading, practice, and conduct, on and subject to the rules of registered entities, namely the NYMEX and CO MEX, that was spoofing, that is, bidding and offering with the intent to cancel the bid and offer before execution, in violation of Title 7, United States Code, Sections 6c(a)(5)(C) and 13(a)(2).”
So the questions we must ask in response to this extended, drawn out conviction process are the following:
- How long can it possibly take for John Edmonds to divulge everything he knows?
- Has Jamie Dimon, JP Morgan CEO, or former head of JP Morgan Commodities Group Blythe Masters, been questioned about their possible roles in the gold spoofing operation of their bank?
- Given that the feds have gone after JP Morgan bankers under the RICO act, this implies that JP Morgan was running a systemically criminal gold spoofing operation, that, by nature, would imply the involvement of much higher level JP Morgan executives in this scheme than even the head of their Metals Trading desk.
- What is the identity of these higher level JP Morgan executives, if true? At least two of the interrogated and arrested JP Morgan have admitted that the gold price manipulation scheme went very high up the corporate hierarchy at JP Morgan.
- What is Mr. Edmonds response to this drawn out inquisition? Does he feel like he is possibly being set-up to be “Epsteined” to keep knowledge of this criminal scheme at the highest echelons of JP Morgan from coming to light?
- Since Edmonds’s arrest, the feds have charged at least four more JP Morgan bankers, Michael Nowak, Gregg Smith, and Christopher Jordan with racketeering charges under the federal RICO act normally reserved for prosecuting low-life gangsters, drug dealers, and mafia members. For example, the US Justice Department invoked the RICO act in 1984 to convict Florida Deputy Police Chief Raymond Cassamayor for running a cocaine smuggling operation and in 1992, to convict John Gotti and Frank Locascio of the infamous Gambino crime family. Both Christopher Jordan and Michael Nowak could face up to 30-years in prison if convicted. JP Morgan Metals Desk Executive Director Jeffrey Ruffo was charged in December 2019. John Edmonds was originally arrested in 2018 and at the time of his arrest, was facing the possibility of considerable prison time. Has his squealing resulted in the arrest of his three colleagues mentioned above and if so, has he gained a significant reduction in prison time for his cooperation?
- JP Morgan bankers have testified that they learned how to effectively spoof gold prices lower in futures markets from Bear Stearns, which makes absolute sense, since Bear Stearns bankers, for decades, were alleged to have been at the head of the class in artificially manufacturing waterfall like type price declines in silver futures markets. It was no surprise, that after the 2008 financial collapse of Bear Stearns, JP Morgan agreed to step in and to continue the silver price manipulation scheme, with the assumption of Bear Stearn’s massive short positions in the silver futures markets. Since John Edmonds was arrested, the US Justice Department has brought cases against 16 more bankers employed by Deutsche Bank and United Bank of Switzerland. Is this a result, again, of John Edmonds’s cooperation with the Feds?
- With the Feds bringing cases against bankers from many different global banking institutions for gold and silver price manipulation, what is their end goal in this RICO sting operation? Is it all a smoke and mirrors game executed to deceive the public into thinking justice, for the first time in decades, will actually be enforced? Will bankers actually receive the long prison sentences they deserve, or will all strike a deal and be slapped only with fines that amount to a fraction of the billions they stole from investors through their executed price suppression scheme in the gold and silver futures markets and will they all walk?
Since the US Justice Department, other than slapping bankers with cases and arresting a few, have remained radio silent about this operation, is the squeeze being put on this bankers real, and do bankers now have to consider the threat of serious prison time as a consequence for their despicable criminal acts for the first time in our lifetime? Even if no Deutsche Bank, JP Morgan, HSBC Bank, or UBS banker serves any prison time for their gold spoofing crimes, it is undeniable that this threat as opposed to their decades of feeling they were above the law may have dampened their current gold and silver spoofing practices. And if the US Justice Department actually eventually sentences any of the aforementioned bankers in this article to a prison term of 10 to 30 years, just one banker receiving such a sentence may permanently end gold and silver spoofing in New York and London.
In China, the threat of execution is enough to prevent Shanghai from being a large center for banker gold and silver spoofing practices. Has this negative possible consequence, along with China’s purging of global bankers from their futures markets that engage in gold spoofing on the SHFE (Shanghai Futures Exchange) been responsible for gold’s mild pullback thus far (21 August) to only $1,947 in futures markets after exceeding $2,000. In the past, when bullion bankers used their normal M.O. of offloading a ton of paper derivative gold and silver contracts in the NY and London futures markets, combined with relentless increases in the initial margins of the most heavily traded gold and silver futures contracts, such behavior would have easily created a 15% decline in gold futures prices (meaning gold futures prices would have declined for front month contracts from recent highs to about the $1,750 range). Instead, the slide in gold prices, for now, was only to about $1,870 this past 12 August.
I considered writing the US Justice Department at the email provided here on the webpage dedicated to this case to see if I could extract any further details about the ongoing case, before my brain unlocked from temporary brain freeze and I realized that such an inquiry has a less than one in a trillion chance of yielding any significant and new information.
Thus for now, to discover more information about this case as it develops, to take bets on whether or not John Edmonds will survive his jail term while he waits upon sentencing, and to continue following this case, you can bookmark my news site here. I have provided all content for absolutely free, with zero advertising revenue, on my news site for the last ten years, but it is becoming increasingly more difficult to continue doing so in recent years. If you wish to support my content, please consider supporting me by becoming an skwealthacademy patron here.
