Ex-Merrill Trader Says Co-Workers in Spoof Trial Taught Him

A former trader at Bank of America Corp.’s Merrill Lynch unit told a federal jury in Chicago that he learned how to manipulate the price of precious metals from two more senior traders in the bank’s New York office, John Pacilio and Edward Bases.

Harnaik Lakhan said he used Merrill’s internal computer system to watch Pacilio and Bases, who are on trial for alleged spoofing, issue buy and sell orders they didn’t intend to be filled, pushing prices up or down to make it profitable for orders they wanted to execute. Lakhan, who agreed to cooperate with the government to avoid prosecution, said he began using the same techniques from his office in London.