New York District Judge John Koeltl has set the trial for former BitMEX executives CEO Arthur Hayes, co-founder Benjamin Delo, and chief technology officer Samuel Reed to be held on 28th of March 2022. The head of business development Gregory Dwyer also has to face charges but has not yet appeared. The trial is going to take place eighteen months after the charges were initially filed.
Defense motions are due to be filed in June while other pretrial motions are expected to be filed by September 2021. The platform had been operating in a jurisdiction outside the United States because of lax regulation – as bragged by an executive – but had also been offering its services to American citizens.
The three former executives of the cryptocurrency exchange, BitMEX, are accused of evading the anti-money laundering laws as well as the violation of the Bank Secrecy Act. The United States Commodity Futures Trading Commission had charged BitMEX with illegally operating as a derivatives platform. The commission further believes that the crypto exchange has been offering illegal leveraged trading services ever since its launch in 2014. The CFTC investigation has been going on since 2019 and the crypto exchange was given ample time to exclude Americans from its platform through the “Know Your Customer” requirements – which it failed to do so.
A civil enforcement action was filed against the three executives who are said to own and operate the exchange as well as five entities, namely: HDR Global Trading Limited, 100x Holding Limited, ABS Global Trading Limited, Shine Effort Inc Limited, and HDR Global Services (Bermuda) Limited (BitMEX).
Apart from civil charges, the four executives are also accused of conspiring to violate and violating the Bank Secrecy Act by the United States Department of Justice. The conviction can land the executives in prison for a maximum of five years with a heavy penalty of $250,000.
