Overview
- Federal prosecutors in Oakland charged 10 people on Monday tied to market-making firms Gotbit, Vortex, Antier, and Contrarian.
- Court filings say the firms used coordinated trades and trading bots to buy and sell the same tokens to fake volume and push up prices, then sold those tokens to investors who did not know the market was being manipulated.
- The case grew out of Operation Token Mirrors, where FBI and IRS agents launched a fake token called NexFundAI to capture offers and executions of wash trading services.
- Three defendants, including Vortex CEO Gleb Gora and Contrarian’s Manu Singh and Vasu Sharma, were arrested in Singapore and extradited to appear in federal court in Oakland.
- Two Gotbit affiliates had already pleaded guilty and were sentenced, and investigators say they have seized over $1 million in crypto as the remaining defendants face up to 20 years in prison and $250,000 fines per count.