📣 Nishad Singh Edges Out Caroline Ellison in the Rat Race
posted 31 Oct 2024
On October 30, Nishad Singh, the former CTO of bankrupt crypto exchange FTX, was sentenced to time served (18 months) and three years of supervised release, becoming the fourth former FTX employee to be officially sentenced.
Singh has also been ordered to pay a fine of $11 billion, which will be covered through asset forfeiture.
While he initially faced a maximum sentence of 75 years, New York Judge Lewis Kaplan highlighted Singh's “remarkable” cooperation with authorities and noted that Singh’s involvement in the fraud was substantially more limited than that of FTX founders Sam Bankman-Fried and Caroline Ellison.
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Ellison, a key witness in Bankman-Fried's trial, was recently sentenced to two years in prison and earned the title “Queen of the Rats.” She was also stripped of all assets, leaving her with a zero balance.
As the former FTX CTO, Singh pled guilty to six counts under the U.S. criminal code, including conspiracy to commit securities fraud, conspiracy to launder money, and conspiracy to violate campaign finance laws.
In court, Singh expressed remorse, saying he had lost his values and wasn’t seeking forgiveness but added that cooperating with the government investigation brought new meaning to his life.
Nishad Singh outside the courthouse. Source: CNN
Andrew Goldstein, Singh’s attorney and a former assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, underscored that Singh joined FTX’s misconduct relatively late and had actively cooperated with the government, providing testimony against Bankman-Fried last year.
Prosecutors disclosed that Singh met with them at least 24 times, demonstrating “earnest remorse and eagerness to assist,” as well as “brought to the Government’s attention criminal conduct that the Government was not aware of and, in some cases, may have never discovered but for Singh’s cooperation.”
Nicolas Roos, one of the prosecutors in the trial, remarked that details of FTX’s campaign financing scheme were “totally unknown” to authorities until Singh’s testimony.
Initially, Bankman-Fried had faced accusations of using stolen client funds to make $100 million in political donations ahead of the 2022 midterms, a charge carrying a potential 25-year sentence. Judge Kaplan ultimately decided that leniency would “send an important message” to society.
While reading the sentence, Judge Kaplan told Singh, “You did the right thing.”
Thus, Singh has outpaced Ellison in the race for leniency. His potential 75-year prison sentence was reduced to three years of supervised release, while the former director of Alameda Research received a two-year prison term, despite facing a possible 25-year sentence.
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