- Nishad Singh, who led engineering at FTX, has pleaded guilty to six criminal charges.
- The SEC separately accused him of skimming about $6 million from FTX for “personal use and expenditures.”
- Singh is “deeply sorry for his role in this,” his lawyers told Insider in a statement.
Nishad Singh is the latest top executive from Sam Bankman-Fried’s crumbled crypto enterprise to plead guilty to criminal charges stemming from the fall of FTX.
Singh pleaded guilty to six counts, including wire fraud and various conspiracy charges, according to a filing on Tuesday in New York federal court. The charges by federal prosecutors outline their now-familiar allegations of a scheme at FTX to use customers’ funds to support the functions of Bankman-Fried’s hedge fund, Alameda Research.
“Singh agreed with others to defraud customers of FTX by misappropriating those customers’ deposits and using those deposits to pay expenses and debts of Alameda Research, and to make investments, and for other purposes,” prosecutors said in their charging document against Singh.
Caroline Ellison, the former CEO of Alameda Research, and FTX cofounder Gary Wang both pleaded guilty in December and are also cooperating with federal prosecutors.
Bankman-Fried, who was hit this month with an updated indictment outlining 12 counts against him, pleaded not guilty in January.
Separately, the US Securities and Exchange Commission unveiled its own civil complaint against Singh on Tuesday, detailing its allegations about how Singh fit into the purported scheme at FTX and Alameda. The securities regulators accused Singh of helping to craft a code that essentially allowed FTX customer funds to slosh around with Alameda’s finances. They also accused him of taking money from FTX.
“Singh withdrew approximately $6 million from FTX for personal use and expenditures, including the purchase of a multi-million dollar house and donations to charitable causes,” the SEC said in a statement.
Singh had been head of engineering at both FTX and Alameda, according to the SEC’s complaint.
“Nishad is deeply sorry for his role in this and has accepted responsibility for his actions,” Singh’s lawyers Andrew Goldstein and Russell Capone, both partners at Cooley LLP, told Insider in a statement.
“He wants to do everything he can to make things right for victims, including by assisting the government to the best of his ability in this case,” they said.
A representative for Sam Bankman-Fried declined to comment.
This month’s updated indictment against Bankman-Fried alleged that he sought to wield influence in Washington through strategic political donations, including by two top FTX executives, whom prosecutors referred to as “straw donors.”
“Today’s guilty plea underscores once again that the crimes at FTX were vast in scope and consequence,” US Attorney Damian Williams said in a statement on Tuesday. “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.”
