Cryptocurrency’s first insider trading case has resulted in a prison sentence for the brother of a former employee at a major currency exchange.
Nikhil Wahi, the brother of a former Coinbase product manager, has been handed a 10 month prison sentence after pleading guilty to a wire fraud conspiracy charge in September.
Wahi admitted to making trades based on confidential Coinbase information which prosecutors say was shared by his brother Ishan with him and their friend Sameer Ramani. Specifically, Ishan Wahi has been accused of sharing information from Coinbase Asset Listing posts at least a day before they went live.
Pleading guilty, Wahi’s lawyer told the court that he made the trades to help his parents retire and pay them back for sending him to college. Prosecutors said that he made around $900,000 from the scheme.
The former Coinbase employee Ishan has pleaded not guilty while Ramani is at large having also been charged.
The conspiracy was exposed by a Twitter user who noticed: “ETH address that bought hundreds of thousands of dollars of tokens exclusively featured in the Coinbase Asset Listing post about 24 hours before it was published.” This would subsequently be investigated by Coinbase, with Ishan Wahi arrested while trying to board a flight to India the next month.
After serving his sentence, Nikhil Wahi could face deportation to India.
Scrutiny is ramping up on fraudulent activity in the crypto space. Most notably, the case of FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried who has been charged with eight counts of fraud and conspiracy over the currency exchange’s collapse. Two of Bankman-Fried’s associates have pleaded guilty and are cooperating with prosecutors.
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