Staff in the dock. The outcomes.

Current status: his conviction has been overturned. On 17 July 2025 the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled that it must be vacated, because it may have rested on a theory of fraud (the “right-to-control” theory) that the US Supreme Court rejected in 2023 in an unrelated case.

In 2017 US prosecutors alleged that in 2011 Mr Johnson and others front-ran a $3.5 billion currency conversion for HSBC’s client Cairn Energy, a UK company, and executed it to “ramp” the price of sterling at the client’s expense. A Brooklyn jury convicted him in October 2017 and in April 2018 he was sentenced to 24 months and a $300,000 fine. The conviction was upheld on direct appeal in 2019, and the Supreme Court declined to hear his appeal in November 2020. After Ciminelli v. United States (2023), he challenged it again, and in July 2025 the Second Circuit ordered it vacated.

HSBC’s own deferred prosecution agreement over the same trade, under which it paid $101.5 million and accepted responsibility for its traders’ conduct, was a separate matter. Read the HSBC case →

Stuart Scott was charged in the United States in the same case. He was not convicted of any offence. On 31 July 2018 the High Court in London, presided over by the Lord Chief Justice, blocked his extradition under the “forum bar” in the Extradition Act 2003, finding the harm was mainly in the UK and that he had strong UK ties. He was never tried and is entitled to the presumption of innocence.

A former HSBC branch worker was jailed for five and a half years at Leicester Crown Court after pleading guilty to fraud by abuse of position and Computer Misuse Act offences. While working at a Leicester branch between 2016 and 2018 he helped move £896,645.05 out of customers’ accounts; one victim, aged 85, lost £448,000. HSBC identified the account-takeover fraud, questioned him in January 2018 and alerted the police.