Nishad Singh, the former Director of
Engineering at bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange, FTX, on Tuesday became the
third of close associates of Samuel Bankman-Fried, the exchange’s Co-Founder,
to plead guilty to fraud charges.
On Tuesday, Both the United States
Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Commodity Futures Trading
Commission (CFTC) charged Singh with misappropriating funds from FTX.com and
aiding Bankman-Fried, FTX.com and hedge fund Alamedia Research LLC. CFTC said
it charged Sigh before a district court in southern New York.
Today we charged Nishad Singh, the former Co-Lead Engineer of FTX Trading Ltd., for his role in a multiyear scheme to defraud equity investors in FTX, the crypto trading platform started by Singh, Samuel Bankman-Fried, and Gary Wang.
— U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (@SECGov) February 28, 2023
Reuters reports that 27-year-old Singh
pleaded guilty to six counts of fraud charges including wire fraud, conspiracy
to commit fraud, money laundering and defrauding the United States. In December
last year, Carline Elison, the former Chief Executive Officer of Alameda
Research and Gary Wang, FTX’s Chief Technology Officer, pleaded guilty to several
counts of crimanal charges.
However, while US regulators are closing
in on Bankman-Fried inner circle members, the former FTX CEO and Co-Founder pleaded not guilty to eight
criminal charges filed against him in December.
Regardless, prosecutors last week expanded criminal charges against
Bankman-Fried to 12, alleging him of conspiracy to make over 300 illegal
political donations.
In its complaint, SEC accused Singh of
aiding Bankman-Fried’s transfer of FTX.com customer assets to Alameda Research
by creating a software code that allowed customer funds to be diverted to the
crypto hedge fund. This is despite “false assurances” Bankman-Fried made to
FTX.com investors of the safety of their funds.
“Among other things, these features in the
FTX code favored Alameda and allowed it to execute transactions even when it
did not have sufficient funds available, including, critically, a ‘can withdraw
below borrow’ functionality that allowed Alameda to withdraw billions of
dollars in customer assets from FTX,” CFTC explained in a press statement.
The commodities regulator added that FTX
customer funds were misappropriated by both executives of FTX and Alameda
Research “for improper purposes such as luxury real estate purchases,…
