You could say the same thing about almost any law. The difference between an accidental fire and arson is criminal intent. While in theory it's not possible to observe someone's inner mental state, in practice their outward actions usually give a pretty good clue, and edge cases where the same actions could be interpreted either way are rare. The same is true in spoofing: while it's theoretically possible that exactly the same strategy might be used by a legitimate trader and by a spoofer, differing only by intent, in practice some strategies are overwhelmingly more likely to be spoofing. The edge cases are tricky, but they don't invalidate the entire concept.

In this particular case, the trader in question would have been financially ruined if his spoofed orders had been executed, so it's pretty clear he didn't intend for them to be.

Caveat: In my opinion, this isn't a distinction well suited to the criminal justice system. I'd rather that exchanges identify probable spoofers and ban them from trading (after some warnings), with the burden of proof (in arbitration) on the accused to show that the suspicious orders were part of a legitimate strategy.

>In this particular case, the trader in question would have been financially ruined if his spoofed orders had been executed, so it's pretty clear he didn't intend for them to be.

Are you sure? If he bought the stocks at the heightened price he could just resell them right away. I'd have expected it would take a much more permanent shift to ruin him.

Or if I put it another way: It seems to me that there is a solid method for making money that's 95% the same as spoofing and 5% actually being happy when your "fake" orders execute. So the intent is still to manipulate the market but only through truthful orders. Then you can no longer look at this pattern of behavior and say that it's overwhelmingly likely to be spoofing. Now what do you do? Do any laws stop this?