Sorting Out Illegal Theft From Legal Theft

Because if you call it an investment that makes it legal:

Regulators now have a full picture of money transfers in the final days of bankrupt brokerage MF Global, and are working to sort out which transactions were legitimate, a top official told Reuters on Wednesday.

"We are far enough along the trail that we know where all the money went. Now it's just finding out which ones of those transactions are legitimate and which ones of them are illegitimate," said Jill Sommers, who is heading the Commodity Futures Trading Commission's review of MF Global.

...In an interview, Sommers told Reuters that just because money was transferred out of a customer account to the broker-dealer account "doesn't mean it was illegitimate."

...Until regulators can determine which transactions were illegitimate, they will not be able to determine the shortfall in customer funds, and how much money will ultimately be distributed back to customers, she said.

Under certain circumstances, futures commission merchants are allowed to take customer funds and invest them in a range of approved securities.

In exchange for using the cash, firms are required to back it up with high-quality collateral such as U.S. government securities.