Lee & Ko acted as defense counsel in successfully obtaining acquittals for former and current CEOs and executives of financial investment companies who had been accused (in criminal filings made against defendants by the prosecutors between November 2011 and January 2012) of violating Article 178 of the Financial Investment Services and Capital Markets Act (“FSCMA”). As defense counsel, Lee & Ko performed a key role in developing legal analyses and arguments that were instrumental in helping to establish, to the court’s satisfaction, that the practice of providing DMA services to scalpers did not violate the relevant statutory provisions and was not contrary to sound public policy concerns, such as investor protection objectives. More specifically, the court ruled that there had been no violations of FSCMA Article 178, based on the following reasoning: (i) in the relevant cases, the furnishing of DMA services to “scalpers” did not interfere with investment transaction opportunities of ordinary investors and therefore did not pose a risk of detrimentally affecting the profits of other investors/traders; (ii) the factual circumstances support a finding that there had been a de facto approval of the relevant practice of furnishing DMA services; and (iii) despite the prosecution’s assertions to the contrary, no legal principle had been established to the effect that there “must be no difference in speed” in relation to the processing of trading orders.