Amaranth Advisors LLC held natural gas trades worth more than $18 billion and exploited legal loopholes to evade regulators wanting to limit the firm’s speculation in a hedge fund that ultimately collapsed, the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations said last week.

Senators found that Connecticut-based Amaranth made trades that were big enough to sway prices, Bloomberg reports. Amaranth investors lost $6.6 billion when the fund failed last year.

“The problem is the people who are depending on that market for real purchases and sales are impacted by the Amaranth gamble,” said committee chairman Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan. “They are going over the falls with Amaranth.”

Senators concluded that Amaranth did not manipulate natural gas markets but found that its trades influenced prices. “Amaranth did not manipulate the market, and nothing in the subcommittee’s report concludes

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