Here is a better explanation of what these traders did:
<a href="http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-11-12/banks-manipulated-foreign-exchange-in-ways-you-can-t-teach" rel="nofollow">http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-11-12/banks-manip...</a><p>Some additional reading:
<a href="http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-05-20/bank-fine-scorecard-follow-along-at-home-" rel="nofollow">http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-05-20/bank-fine-s...</a><p>Quote: "<i>They also got together in chat rooms to, essentially, lay off some of their client risk to one another prior to the fixing. That laying off of client risk, again, looks a bit conspiratorial, but it probably made markets more efficient, and is not obviously bad or illegal. Then they went beyond that efficient laying off of risk, trying to move the price in their favor. They seem to have made some money doing this, at the expense of their clients, but my suspicion was that they were "tinkering at the edges of real supply and demand," optimizing how they made money trading their combined customer order book rather than truly rigging the FX market.</i>"<p>This is an alternative viewpoint:
<a href="https://medium.com/bull-market/oranges-and-lemons-the-fx-scandal-in-perspective-cd3456089ce4" rel="nofollow">https://medium.com/bull-market/oranges-and-lemons-the-fx-sca...</a><p>Quote: "<i>Although there was some behaviour that was clearly on the other side of the line, the regulators also made clear that lots of the practices involved were not intrinsically criminal; this was an investigation into a grey area, not a straightforward case of lying. Of course, the industry has less than zero claim to the benefit of anyone’s doubt, and people will be instantly suspicious of claims that “it’s more complicated than that”, so maybe I can explain what went on in the FX market through the medium of a series of examples...</i>"