The Department of Justice announced criminal charges against a former Coinbase product manager, Ishan Wahi, alleging he passed along confidential information about upcoming token listings on at least 14 occasions—information that let his friend and brother profit to the tune of $1.5 million.
In a press release, the agency alleges that the trio made illegal trades involving at least 25 different tokens—buying the tokens ahead of their being listing on Coinbase, and then selling shortly afterwards.
The cryptocurrency community has long used the term “Coinbase effect” to describe a token’s pop in price that coincided with its listing on the platform.
“After getting tips from Ishan Wahi, Nikhil Wahi and [Sameer] Ramani used anonymous Ethereum blockchain wallets to acquire crypto assets shortly before Coinbase publicly announced that it was listing or considering listing these crypto assets on its exchanges,” said the Justice Department release.
The release added that the trio tried to cover their tracks by using accounts at centralized crypto exchanges held in the names of others, and that they “regularly created and used new Ethereum blockchain wallets without any prior transaction history in order to further conceal their involvement in the scheme.”
In response to a request for comment, a Coinbase spokesperson referred to a recently updated blog post that now states, “Once we collected sufficient evidence to be confident in our suspicions, we provided information about these individuals to the DOJ and terminated our employee … We appreciate the DOJ’s recognition of our help in holding these individuals accountable.”
According to the Justice Department, a Coinbase security official told Wahi to appear before for in-person meetings in mid-May. In response, Wahi allegedly tried to flee to India on a one-way ticket, but was stopped by law enforcement just prior to boarding.
Wahi along with his brother and friend are all facing charges of wire fraud and wire fraud conspiracy, each of which comes with a maximum prison sentence of 20 years.
“Today’s charges are a further reminder that Web3 is not a law-free zone. Just last month, I announced the first ever insider trading case involving NFTs, and today I announce the first ever insider trading case involving cryptocurrency markets. Our message with these charges is clear: fraud is fraud is fraud, whether it occurs on the blockchain or on Wall Street,” said U.S. Attorney Damian Williams.
Thitory will be updated shortly.
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