Hydrogen Execs Incarcerated for Manipulating HYDRO Crypto Price
Executing a multimillion-dollar cryptocurrency securitization scheme, the Hydrogen Technology Corporation’s top executives were found guilty.
Sentencing Details
Michael Kane, the chief executive of Hydrogen Technology Corporation, a New York-based crypto firm, who was found guilty of the manipulation of the price of HYDRO, a token issued by Hydrogen, has been sentenced to almost four years in prison by a Florida judge
According to the June 25th press release from the DOJ, Shane Hampton, the head of financial engineering at Hydrogen, was sentenced to two years and the rest of the actual sentence Michael Kane received was nine months. he was given a sentence of three years and nine months in prison.
Scheme Orchestration
Nicole M. Argentieri, who is the head of the Justice Department’s criminal division, said that the crime committed by Hampton and Kane was run and guided by a trading bot that affected the company’s issued cryptocurrency prices.
According to Argentieri, “For the first time in a federal criminal trial, a jury determined that a cryptocurrency was a security and that manipulating cryptocurrency prices was securities fraud”
Manipulation Tactics
Docket documents say that Michael Kane and Shane Hampton ordered Moonwalkers Trading Limited, a South African company, to manipulate HYDRO’s worth in an American-based cryptocurrency exchange. While they didn’t specify which one was the exchange they sent, it was stated by the prosecutors that the bot from Moonwalkers Trading, which was programmed from the firm, filled the market up with fake (pseudonymous?), and unauthorized orders from October two thousand eighteen to April two thousand nineteen.
Kane, Hampton, and other participants, the prosecutors claim, supposedly carried out approximately $7 million of wash trades, and over $300 million of spoof trades for HYDRO using the bot during the period. As a result of this deceit, almost $2 million was realized in the form of profits in connection with HYDRO sales through the period of about 10 months.
SEC Charges
In September 2022, Kane and Tyler Ostern, the chief executive of Moonwalkers Trading Limited, were charged by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for their parts in the unregistered offers and sales of digital currency-based securities.
