The Accomplice

Police reveal how they cracked Australia’s biggest insider trading scam.

Because it was insider trading.

It would become the greatest insider trading story that ended in conviction in this country.

"So far as we know, this is the only known instance of insider trading on the currency markets in the world," says journalist and podcaster Angus Grigg, who covered the story for the Australian Financial Review's podcast The Sure Thing.

Despite being part of the scheme, Christopher Hill didn't know how big the deception would ultimately become after he first began handing Kamay ultra-sensitive information from his job at the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS).

He was super driven and ambitious to the point where he just had to succeed," Hill tells Australian Story.

Kamay has not responded to messages from Australian Story.

Supplied: Christopher Hill.

There were barbecues, plenty of alcohol and Hill was chatting with someone about labour force figures when Kamay, "Just spun around and said, 'Oh, you know, I can use those to make money'.".

"It was just a massive throwaway comment at the time, nothing more than that," Hill says.

"And also the fact that using that information could be very profitable trading on the markets," Hill admits.

"There wasn't a lot of thought put into the burner phones," Hill says.

I think one of us just had it in the back of our minds from, I don't know, TV or movies.".

Lukas would buy the Australian dollar and when it went up, he would sell it and make a profit," Angus Grigg says.

Australian Story: Marc Smith.

"It was very clear from that point on that he wasn't going to stop at $200,000," Grigg says.

In short order, Lukas Kamay at the age of 24 became one of the most successful traders in Australia.

By November Grigg says: "Lukas's trading just got totally out of control.

"I looked at three of the trades in a row and just saw the fact that there was statistical data in each one." Lukas was trading exclusively on ABS news releases.

One of them, Christopher Hill, lived in Canberra.

"It's actually really difficult to catch people who are committing insider trading," Grigg explains.

"I think people are getting away with insider trading all the time, mainly because it's very very difficult for ASIC and the AFP to crack these sort of crimes because the standard of proof is so high.

"A couple of private schoolboys who were complete amateurs in terms of having a criminal history," Grigg says.

And Kamay was still trading, getting more brazen, taking more risks, making more money.

It did appear that Lukas was taunting law enforcement," Standing says.

It was the first time the AFP had recorded evidence of communication between Kamay and Hill.

Kamay picked Hill up, gave him $6,500 in cash, and they talked within earshot of the bugs in the car.

A few weeks later Grigg says "Authorities finally got the chance to go and kick some doors with dawn raids in both Canberra and Melbourne.".

"The police officers had a sort of sense that Lukas still feels at that point that maybe he can pull this one out of the fire," Grigg says.

Standing found Kamay to be "calm, almost unconcerned." Until, that is, he was informed that they had "restrained all his bank accounts and also two properties and a BMW motor vehicle," Standing says.

"I thought they were trying to trick me," Hill says.

"It was such a stupid amount of money that there's no way it wouldn't have gone undetected," Hill says.

At the end of 2014 in the Victorian Supreme Court, in a blaze of headlines, both of them pleaded guilty to insider trading.

"This was very unusual for someone pleading guilty and he essentially blamed it all on Chris," Grigg says.

Kamay was sentenced to seven years and three months in jail with a non-parole period of four years and six months, the longest sentence for insider trading in Australian history.

He has taken full responsibility for his actions and surprises people when he says he has no bitterness or anger towards Kamay

"If there was any insider trading, he's probably going to be the one that would uncover it," Murphy says

"I think he just wants to move forward and work hard, build his career and build his life."

"I don't think he's the sort of bogeyman that he's portrayed

I think there's a lot of good in Lukas as well," Grigg says

Now Christopher Hill tells a cautionary tale

"If I can do something that benefits other people who may be in the same sort of position as I was in, if we can make them think twice or three times about what they're about to do."