A new study of options trading prior to corporate mergers finds that insider trading appears to be extremely widespread and "pervasive." The S.E.C. must put a stop to this even if it means arresting every last corporate executive. Preemptive warfare is the American way.

Somehow it is possible to be caught for insider trading even if you chewed up and ate the Post-It Notes that you wrote down your illegal stock tips on. That's some CSI shit, man!

"Should insider trading be legal? Insiders say yes." Should robbing insiders be legal? Outsiders say yes.

Corporate executives at public companies are allowed to buy and sell stock in their own company—but they are not allowed to buy and sell stock in their own company based on nonpublic information (information that they would know, but that the average investor would not). That would be insider trading, which is illegal. So why do executives seem to do far better than average when trading their own company's stock? HMMM.

The SEC has charged a 26 year-old named Toby Scammell (HEH) with insider trading, after he made nearly $200K on stock deals after learning from his Disney-employed girlfriend that Disney was going to buy Marvel. How many objectionable things do we know about Toby?

We always laugh when, say, someone's arrested for brazenly offering weed for sale on Craigslist. Our apologies to those fools. It turns out that the dumbest criminals of all are trying to pull off insider trading. Very, very poorly.

Nina Devlin was a partner with fancy financial PR firm Brunswick Group—which was great for her husband, who took information about the deals that Nina was working on and used it to help his friends make millions through illegal insider trading. Now Nina has a new job. With Edelman!

Billionaire Maverick(s owner) Mark Cuban has issued a statement proclaiming his innocence on the insider trading charges that the SEC filed against him earlier today. He posted the statement on his beloved blog, appropriately. And when he says "I wish I could say more," you can trust that he's telling the truth. We look forward to an ill-advised outburst from him in the coming weeks. For now, the official denial is after the jump: