"This is not a garden-variety insider trading case," said U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara on Friday about his arrest of five men and a woman for insider trading. Yet that is precisely what it appears to be, albeit involving more money and more prominent executives than is usually the case. The evidence released so far most closely resembles the Ivan Boesky scam of two decades ago, in which the model for Gordon Gekko profited from insider information. This is not another Madoff fraud perpetrated on innocent and unsuspecting investors.

The...