Former FTX executive Nishad Singh will learn his fate on Wednesday afternoon (October 30).
Singh, the former chief engineer of a failed cryptocurrency exchange, will be sentenced for the theft of approximately $8 billion worth of customer funds by Sam Bankman Freed.
Shortly after FTX’s collapse in November 2022, Singh and other executives pleaded guilty to fraud and conspiracy and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors. He testified against Bankman Fried last year and helped convict his former boss and friend on fraud charges.
He told jurors he was “embarrassed and embarrassed” by Bankman Freed’s reckless and excessive spending, even before he knew the money came from stolen customer funds.
“It didn’t align with what we thought the company was for,” Singh said.
Bankman Freed was sentenced to 25 years in prison for that crime and is appealing the sentence. A Reuters report, citing a court filing from the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Manhattan, said Singh, 29, is expected to receive a much lighter sentence.
“Mr. Singh provided significant assistance to the government in investigating and prosecuting criminals and recovering assets for victims,” the filing states.
However, there is no guarantee that Singh’s cooperation will allow him to avoid a prison sentence. Bankman Fried’s former girlfriend, Caroline Ellison, head of FTX’s sister hedge fund Alameda Research, was sentenced last month to two years in prison.
Judge Lewis Kaplan praised Ellison’s cooperation with prosecutors, saying he presented Bankman Fried with “one of the vast pieces of evidence in this case.” Still, the judge said criminal penalties were necessary to deter others from committing fraud.
“I don’t agree with a literal get-out-of-jail-free card,” Kaplan said.
According to Reuters, Singh’s lawyers also said that Bankman Freed and Ellison had already decided to use billions of dollars earned from FTX customers to cover Alameda’s losses, and that Singh was not involved in the conspiracy. He claims that he realized this relatively late.
Another former FTX executive, co-founder Gary Wang, is scheduled to be sentenced next week. Wang, who attended MIT with Bankman Fried, was accused by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) of developing specific software code that helped Alameda misappropriate FTX customer funds.
While testifying at Bankman Freed’s criminal trial, Wang said that despite being aware of Alameda and FTX’s multibillion-dollar deficits, Bankman Freed told customers and investors that “FTX It’s okay,” he said over and over again.
More information: Alameda Research, Caroline Ellison, Crime, Cryptocurrency, Financial Crimes, Fraud, FTX, FTX Collapse, News, Nishad Singh, PYMNTS News, Sam Bankman Freed, Featured News
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