Follow this link to the story in OpEdNews. I haven’t read enough of this web site to vouch for this story based on that. However, the story seems to be legitimate and the links look good, although I haven’t had a chance to follow them yet.
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Let’s see if this quote piques your interest:

When “market making” (matching buyers with sellers) was done strictly by human brokers on the floor of the stock exchange, manipulations and front running were possible but were against the rules, which were strictly enforced. Front running by computer, using complex trading programs, is an entirely different species of fraud. A minor potential for abuse has morphed into a monster. Keiser maintains that computerized front running with HFT has become the principal business of Wall Street and the primary force driving most of the volume on exchanges, contributing not only to a large portion of trading profits but to the manipulation of markets for economic and political ends.

You ought to be sufficiently horrified if you read more.

There are so many stories on OpEdNews about financial shenanigans that I could hardly post them all. I decided to link to this one story. You can read the others if you have the time.

2010/04/29 – I clicked on the link in the article for U.S. patent no. 5,960,176. This actually leads to patent search on Google which gives you the patent and patents that refer to it

This link takes you to actual patent 5960176

The name of the patent is Computer-Implemented Securities Trading System With A Virtual Specialist Function.

There is also patent 6,505,174.

Patent 6,505,174 has the same title as patent 5,960,176. The younger patent references the older patent.