YOU could keep a brothel, deal in firearms and engage in “wanton or furious driving” all at the same time and still end up with a prison sentence shorter than that received by Tom Hayes, the former trader who on August 3rd copped a 14-year term for market-rigging. The severity of the punishment can be surpassed in Britain only by those for rape, drug-dealing and murder—for which offenders can face a lifetime behind bars (though prisoners can be eligible for parole following a fixed-term, set at the judge's discretion).

Mr Hayes was found guilty of eight counts to defraud. The judge, Jeremy Cooke, called him “the hub of the conspiracy” to rig LIBOR, a key interest rate. The nature of his offence is less easy to explain than, say, burglary, or making explosives, or cannabis-peddling: other offences that carry 14-year sentences. He made his employers—UBS and then Citi—hundreds of millions distorting the global financial system to suit his trading positions. Contracts worth trillions, from mortgages to international corporate loans, were swayed by Mr Hayes’s schemes to bolster his bonus.

Judge Cooke said he wanted to “send a signal” to errant bankers, at least a dozen others of whom are now facing charges in Britain on LIBOR's rigging alone. Few will be tempted to repeat Mr Hayes’s legal strategy of pleading guilty at first and then pulling a volte-face to plead not-guilty in a bid to avoid jail altogether—just the sort of gambit to be expected from a risk-addicted trader, perhaps.

Mr Hayes will likely serve half his sentence, or seven years. That will be double the penalty that was meted out to Nick Leeson, the rogue trader who brought down Barings in 1995 (he was released early from a prison in Singapore due to illness). Kweku Adoboli, an erstwhile colleague of Mr Hayes at UBS, was released from Maidstone prison in June having served half his seven-year sentence for unauthorised trading. Jerome Kerviel, another trader who ran off the rails, served five months of a sentence that was eventually cut back to three years.