No they don't. The very big difference is intent and actual behavior. Sarao was blatantly not following through on any of his spoofing, which is where the intent is derived based on pattern of behavior.

If a hedge fund behaved the exact same way, they'd get in trouble for it. That is, if Renaissance Technologies decided to do spoofing on 99.999% of its market action, they'd get in trouble for it. Hedge funds doing high frequency trading, is not the same as spoofing.

The SEC is fine with HFT traders executing less than 1/10th the orders they place so the rules are not that clear cut.

Yes but canceling a lot of your orders is not necessarily indicative of spoofing. In fact it's kind of the crux of market making. These are ver different behaviors.

https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2015-10-08/why-do-hi...