Two Former FTX Executives to Be Sentenced in October, November

Two former FTX executives who testified against the cryptocurrency exchange’s co-founder, Sam Bankman-Fried, now know when they will face sentencing hearings.

Nishad Singh will be sentenced on Oct. 30 and Gary Wang will be sentenced on Nov. 20, with both having pleaded guilty to fraud, Reuters reported Tuesday (July 9).

Prosecutors are expected to ask the judge to consider their cooperation when determining their sentences, according to the report.

Singh, the former director of engineering at FTX, entered a guilty plea to criminal charges in February 2023. He also agreed to cooperate with an investigation into Bankman-Fried’s activities, admitting that he knew by the middle of 2022 that Bankman-Fried was using customer funds without their knowledge, among other irregularities.

It was reported at the time that Singh pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud, three counts of conspiracy to commit fraud, one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering and one count of conspiracy to defraud the United States by violating campaign finance laws.

As part of the guilty plea, Singh agreed to surrender all proceeds from his work with FTX and traveled back from the Bahamas shortly after FTX imploded in November 2022 in part to assist in the investigation.

In October, Singh testified during Bankman-Fried’s criminal trial that he was “embarrassed and ashamed” of reckless and excessive outlays made by his boss, even before he found out the money was coming from allegedly stolen customer funds.

During the same month, under cross-examination, Singh revealed he had borrowed millions of dollars from FTX in October 2022 to buy a luxury home, despite knowing that the company was misusing customer deposits at the time and had an $8 billion hole in its balance sheet.

Gary Wang pleaded guilty to fraud in December 2022, agreeing to cooperate with prosecutors.

Wang and Bankman-Fried attended MIT together and were reportedly part of a coeducational living group devoted to activities like puzzles, playing board games and debating logic problems.

As a co-founder of FTX, Wang was accused by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) of creating the specific software code that allowed FTX-affiliated company Alameda to divert FTX customer funds.

In October, while testifying in the criminal trial of Bankman-Fried, Wang said that despite being aware of the multi-billion-dollar deficit at Alameda and FTX, Bankman-Fried repeatedly told customers and investors that “FTX was fine.”