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On May 3, 2023, a jury found Nathaniel Chastain, a former manager of OpenSea (a major NFT marketplace), guilty of wire fraud and money laundering in connection with his attempts to conceal his use of confidential business...more
On December 27, 2022, the Second Circuit called into question the government’s theory of insider trading of confidential government agency information, potentially undercutting the DOJ’s enforcement of various white-collar...more
Prosecution of executives for insider trading is not necessarily headline news – except when the prosecution involves the SEC wading deep into the waters of defining crypto as a security enroute to securing two guilty pleas. ...more
In what seems destined to be a landmark Delaware Court of Chancery decision, Vice Chancellor J. Travis Laster denied former McDonald’s Executive Vice President and Global Chief People Officer David Fairhurst’s motion to...more
Key Points - In the wake of the Supreme Court’s “Bridgegate” decision in Kelly v. United States, a divided panel in the 2nd Circuit reversed its prior decision in United States v. Blaszczak, and held that a federal...more
On December 27, 2022, in United States v. Blaszczak (“Blaszczak II”), the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit called into question what constitutes “property” in cases of securities fraud, wire fraud and theft of...more
A divided panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit held, on December 27, 2022, in United States v. Blaszczak (“Blaszczak II”) that an agency’s confidential, pre-decisional information did not count as...more
On December 27, 2022, a divided panel of the Second Circuit issued a majority opinion in United States v. Blaszczak (“Blaszczak II”), reconsidering the contours of Title 18 insider trading liability. While the decision does...more
The Second Circuit held yesterday that a government agency’s nonpublic, pre-decisional regulatory information does not constitute “property” for purposes of the federal insider-trading and wire-fraud statutes. The decision...more
In recent years, the U.S. Supreme Court has narrowed the scope of various federal criminal fraud statutes. For example, in McDonnell v. United States, the Court overturned the honest services fraud conviction of the former...more
Many businesses and businesspeople are exposed to potential legal liability for a wide variety of financial crimes. Minimizing financial crime risk or exposure is critical and requires strict compliance with the state and...more
In what the Manhattan federal prosecutors have touted as the first-ever guilty plea in an insider trading case involving cryptocurrency, the brother of a former Coinbase Global, Inc. (Coinbase) product manager pled guilty to...more
Federal prosecutors from the Southern District of New York recently charged Nathan Chastain with wire fraud and money laundering in connection with a purported scheme to illegally profit from sales and purchases of...more
On July 21, 2022, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filed a civil enforcement action alleging that from at least June 2021 to April 2022, the three named defendants orchestrated and perpetrated an insider...more
On July 21, 2022, the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) each alleged insider trading violations against a former Coinbase employee, his brother, and another alleged acquaintance...more
On July 21, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York announced parallel civil and criminal actions against a former product manager at Coinbase...more
On July 21, 2022, the US Department of Justice (DOJ) unsealed an indictment charging Ishan Wahi (Wahi), a former product manager at a large cryptocurrency trading platform (the Platform) - along with his brother Nikhil Wahi...more
A few days ago, the SEC has charged a former employee of OpenSea (the largest NFT marketplace) In the first-ever digital asset indictment. SEC charged him with wire fraud and money laundering in connection with a scheme to...more
A product manager at OpenSea, a $13 billion online marketplace for non-fungible-tokens (“NFTs”), was indicted in the first-ever “insider-trading” action brought against a person using blockchain-based assets to allegedly...more
We have previously addressed the recent indictment against Nathaniel Chastain, a former executive of a major NFT marketplace, for insider trading involving NFTs. The indictment charges Chastain with one count of wire fraud...more
The recent indictment of an employee of OpenSea, a prominent NFT marketplace, highlights the risk of trading digital assets based on the improper use of confidential information, even where the digital asset is not a...more
On June 1, 2022, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York announced the indictment of former OpenSea employee Nathaniel Chastain for an NFT “insider trading” scheme. From at least June to...more
A former employee of OpenSea, the largest marketplace for the purchase and sale of non-fungible tokens (NFTs), has been indicted and charged with wire fraud and money laundering allegedly in connection with actions he took...more
The US Department of Justice (DOJ) and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has announced the unsealing of a first-of-its-kind indictment involving a digital asset “insider trading” scheme. The indictment charges Nathaniel...more
The United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York and the Assistant Director-in-Charge of the New York Field Office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (“FBI”), announced today the unsealing of an Indictment...more