Hefu Chai and Huaisun Xiang worked as engineers at Robinhood and, according to the investigation, used access to non-public information about upcoming cryptocurrency listings on Robinhood Crypto—previously buying perpetual contracts for these tokens on Hyperliquid ahead of official announcements. Each earned over $50,000 from this activity.
Prosecutor Jamie McDonald: “Corporate insiders cannot circumvent securities and commodity market laws by trading on insider information through derivatives.”
The charges are violation of the Commodity Exchange Act (up to 10 years) and wire fraud (up to 20 years). Robinhood cooperated with the investigation; the defendants are considered innocent until proven guilty in court.
Continue reading this article on source: justice.gov