2 years ago
Cheyenne Ligon is simply a CoinDesk quality newsman with a absorption connected crypto regularisation and policy. She has nary important crypto holdings.
Former BitMEX CEO Arthur Hayes is acceptable to look sentencing successful a New York courthouse connected Friday aft pleading guilty successful February to charges that helium willfully failed to instrumentality an anti-money laundering (AML) programme astatine the exchange.
Prosecutors say the deficiency of know-your-customer (KYC) requirements astatine BitMEX allowed the institution to thrive arsenic a hotbed for transgression activity, including wealth laundering and sanctions evasion.
Hayes and his BitMEX co-founders, Samuel Reed and Ben Delo, arsenic good arsenic the company’s archetypal employee, Gregory Dwyer, were initially charged successful October 2020 with 1 number each of violating the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA), and different of conspiring to bash so.
The 4 men, arsenic good arsenic BitMEX and different firm entities, besides faced civilian suits from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) that resulted successful monetary penalties. BitMEX was ordered to wage the regulators $100 million; Hayes, Reed, and Delo had to fork implicit $10 cardinal each.
The transgression charges transportation a maximum condemnation of 5 years each, but Hayes’ plea woody with prosecutors reduced the sentencing guidelines to betwixt six and 12 months.
Hayes, a U.S. national and longtime nonmigratory of Singapore, surrendered to U.S. authorities successful Hawaii past April, successful a woody brokered betwixt his lawyers and national prosecutors. He was released connected a $10 cardinal enslaved secured by $1 cardinal successful currency and co-signed by his mother.
In a 65-page sentencing memo submitted to the tribunal connected May 4, Hayes’ lawyers asked the justice for leniency: probation, with nary jailhouse clip oregon location arrest. They besides requested that Hayes support his state to question internationally and unrecorded abroad.
The submission besides included a missive from his mother. Hayes’ lawyers argued that the erstwhile BitMEX CEO’s beingness had already been upended by the charges, which they said had “an bonzer and well-publicized interaction connected Mr. Hayes’ idiosyncratic beingness and connected the BitMEX concern that helium co-founded.”
They besides argued that Hayes is improbable to reoffend.
The government, however, sees things differently. In a sentencing memo submitted connected May 12, prosecutors asked the justice to manus down “a important condemnation of incarceration, supra the applicable Sentencing Guidelines scope of 6 to 12 months.”
Prosecutors accidental Hayes flaunted BitMEX’s disregard for KYC and AML guidelines, advertizing the company’s deficiency of compliance connected the exchanges’ website and successful blog posts and media interviews.
This, prosecutors say, attracted “precisely the atrocious actors which the BSA intends to deter” – and earned Hayes implicit $100 million.
Hayes’ prominence successful the crypto assemblage and his penchant for talking to journalists astir his worldview (and his glamorous beingness connected the lam) seems to beryllium a sore spot for prosecutors:
“The suspect chose to usage his power to beforehand a imaginativeness for the crypto manufacture that was successful nonstop contradiction to the law, and calculated to undermine authorities regulations,” prosecutors wrote. “The suspect routinely criticized and mocked KYC requirements, and made it wide that helium had nary involvement successful complying with them.”
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Cheyenne Ligon is simply a CoinDesk quality newsman with a absorption connected crypto regularisation and policy. She has nary important crypto holdings.
Cheyenne Ligon is simply a CoinDesk quality newsman with a absorption connected crypto regularisation and policy. She has nary important crypto holdings.
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