Nishad Singh, the former director of engineering at FTX, a cryptocurrency exchange, has pleaded guilty to six conspiracy charges, including money laundering and wire fraud. He has agreed to cooperate with the investigation into the founder of FTX, Sam Bankman-Fried. Singh is the third member of Bankman-Fried’s inner circle to plead guilty and cooperate with the probe. Two top US market regulators, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the Securities and Exchange Commission, have also announced lawsuits against Singh over his role in the alleged scheme.
Nishad Singh, the former director of engineering and co-founder FTX, has pleaded guilty to six conspiracy charges, including conspiracy to commit money laundering, wire fraud, and violating federal campaign finances laws. He has also agreed to cooperate with the investigation into the founder of FTX, Sam Bankman-Fried, who is facing eight criminal charges to which he has pleaded not guilty.
Singh acknowledged that Bankman-Fried’s hedge fund, Alameda Research, was borrowing FTX customer funds without their knowledge in mid-2022. The former FTX executive reportedly traveled back from the Bahamas in the wake of FTX’s collapse in November in part to assist the US investigation.
Singh is the third member of Bankman-Fried’s inner circle to plead guilty and cooperate with the probe. Former Alameda Research CEO Caroline Ellison has agreed to plead guilty to seven offenses, while Gary Wang, FTX’s former chief technology officer, pleaded guilty to criminal charges. Singh played a major role in the day-to-day operations at FTX as head of engineering. He initially joined Alameda back in 2017 before establishing FTX two years later with Wang and Bankman-Fried.
Meanwhile, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the Securities and Exchange Commission, two top US market regulators, have announced lawsuits against Singh over his role in the alleged scheme.
According to Damian Williams, US attorney for the Southern District of New York,
“Today’s guilty plea underscores once again that the crimes at FTX were vast in scope and consequence. They rocked our financial markets with a multibillion-dollar fraud. And they corrupted our politics with tens of millions of dollars in illegal straw campaign contributions.”
In the latest developments in the FTX saga, a New York judge has put cases against the former FTX CEO brought by the SEC and the CFTC on hold until the criminal cases against him are concluded. Furthermore, new court documents have revealed the identities of the two mysterious co-signers on FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried’s bond, who turned out to be Andreas Paepcke and Larry Kramer, Stanford University professors and close friends of Bankman-Fried’s parents.
In conclusion, the guilty plea of Nishad Singh and his cooperation with the investigation into FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried’s alleged crimes underscores the scope and consequence of the FTX scandal. The involvement of top US market regulators and the ongoing criminal cases against Bankman-Fried and others in his inner circle suggest that the fallout from this scandal may continue for some time to come.
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