they were fined for 'spoofed' trades which in my view are fake trades - they never intended for them to execute, only to steer the market in a direction they want to fill in orders they had at a profit.

if those trades ran the risk of executing they would have probably been cancelled fast and moved further.

The language of trading is fairly precise - trades and orders are quite distinct things. Orders may or (commonly) may not result in trades.

An order that doesn't execute is not associated with any trade.

JPMorgan were fined for spoofing orders not trades.