Update (August 21, 9:50 pm UTC): This article has been updated to include information on the criminal case against Edward Zimbardi.
Former Alameda Research and FTX executives receive 5-year trading ban
On Tuesday, the US District Court for the Southern District of New York (SDNY) entered a consent order regarding a 2022 enforcement action against former Alameda Research CEO Carolyn Ellison and crypto exchange FTX co-founder Zixiao “Gary” Wang.
The order imposed by the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) requires Ellison and Wang to receive a five-year trading ban related to their role in the collapse of the crypto exchange. The CFTC also ordered that the Alameda CEO receive a 10-year registration ban, while Wang received an eight-year registration ban.
According to CFTC Enforcement Director David Miller, the orders reflected Wang and Ellison’s “material assistance in the commission’s FTX-related investigation.” The civil case is separate from the criminal case involving the misappropriation of customer funds at FTX, in which Ellison was sentenced to two years in prison and Wang served time.
US prosecutors dispute $400,000 Maduro bets against Polymarket trader
On Wednesday, lawyers representing the U.S. government at SDNY filed their opposition to a motion to dismiss Gannon Ken Van Dyke, a U.S. soldier who allegedly made more than $400,000 using nonpublic information using event contracts on the prediction market platform PolyMarket. Van Dijk was linked to the military operation that ousted Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in January.
Related: Judge suspends CFTC’s case against US military over prediction market betting
US Soldier’s motion to dismiss, filed July 31, contends that the Commodity Exchange Act, at the center of the three complaints he faces, was “vague” in treating event contracts as “swaps” under the CFTC’s purview. In Wednesday’s filing, the U.S. government argued that Van Dyke’s “presumptions, edge cases and ongoing litigation over state gaming laws” were unnecessary to the decision to move forward with the case.
“Van Dyke’s motion asks the court to make a factual determination that is not appropriate at the motion-to-dismiss stage,” said SDNY Deputy US Attorney Sean Buckley. “His argument relies on speculative statements about the facts based on improper inferences from the allegations and erroneous conclusions about the nature of the allegations, to assert that the facts do not amount to ‘property.'”
As of Friday, the court had not posted a decision on the motion in the public docket.
Judge acquits 25-count indictment of alleged $165 million crypto fraud
On Monday, a Georgia judge ordered the unsealing of an indictment involving a man behind a $165 million cryptocurrency Ponzi scheme.
Edward Zimbardi, originally indicted on July 8, will face wire fraud and money laundering charges in the Northern District of Georgia. the exile From Fiji, where he fled after running a crypto scheme. According to prosecutors, Zimbardi “duped thousands of people into investing in his ‘crypto program’ with false promises of huge returns.”
Magistrate Judge Anna Howard this week ordered the unsealing of Zimbardi’s indictment, which finds that the alleged crypto fraudster is charged with 12 counts of wire fraud, one count of money laundering conspiracy and 11 counts of money laundering based on activity in the crypto program between 2022 and 2023.
Prosecutors are seeking to seize money from the crypto already seized after Zimbardi’s alleged wire fraud and money laundering and possible convictions. The complaint listed 11.87 Bitcoin (BTC), 2.15 Ether (ETH), 713,344,695 Shiba Inu (SHIB), 47,110 USDt (USDT), 12,095 USDT0, 3.3 million XRP, 1,095 Dogecoin (Dogecoin) and 12,000 million dollars. 11.97 polygons (POL) were seized by the Dutch authorities in 2024 – with a combined value of around $6 million.
magazine: MiCA cracks down on USDT in Europe… but no one else cares
