All you need to know about the Indian men charged with crypto's first insider trading case

moneycontrol.com:

US authorities have charged on July 21 two Indian brothers and their Indian-American friend in the first global case of cryptocurrency insider trading that enabled them to make $1.5 million in ill-gotten gains.

Ishan Wahi, Nikhil Wahi and their friend Sameer Ramani were charged with wire fraud conspiracy and wire fraud in connection with the scheme to commit insider trading in cryptocurrency assets. Each charge carries a maximum sentence of 20 years.

 Ishan, 32, charged with two counts of wire fraud conspiracy and two counts of wire fraud, worked as a product manager at Coinbase Global at the time of fraud, US prosecutors said July 21.

 Coinbase is one of the largest crypto asset trading platforms in the US, with more than 98 million registered users. Since May 2020, the platform would publicly announce plans to list certain crypto assets on its blog or Twitter feed.

 “The prices of crypto assets identified in these listing announcements, including crypto asset securities, typically appreciate quickly and significantly,” the US Securities and Exchange Commission said in its litigation filing, accessed by Moneycontrol.

Ishan worked with Coinbase from October 2020 till late May 2022 as a manager in the trading platform’s assets and investing products group. Being privy to and directly involved with the crypto asset listing information, he tipped his brother and Ramani ahead of the announcements, sometimes just a few minutes before, between June 2021 and April 2022.

 More than 10 such announcements were leaked with information on trading in at least 25 crypto assets.

Ishan and Ramani, 33, had attended the University of Texas in Austin at the same time and had known each other since 2013. They exchanged phone calls and text