Arthur Hayes, former CEO of Crypto Exchange Bitmex, has been pardoned by US President Donald Trump, according to a Friday report from CNBC.
Trump allegedly also pardoned Hayes’ co -founders in Bitmex, Samuel Reed and Benjamin Delo.
In 2020, the US Department of Justice (DOJ) charged with Bitmex, its three co -founders and its first employee, Gregory Dwyer, accused them of violating the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA). Prosecutors claimed that Bitmex announced himself as a place where customers could almost anonymously use their platform without anonymous without giving Basic Know-Your Customer (KYC) information. All four people eventually pleaded not guilty and were sentenced to fines and probation. The exchange itself pleaded guilty to violating BSA last year.
Hayes was facing two years of probation; Delo spent 30 months and reed 18 months. Dwyer got 12 months probation.
Commodity Futures Trading Commission ordered Bitmex to pay $ 100 million for violating the Commodity Exchange Act and other CFTC rules in 2021, separately from its DOJ settlement.
Attorneys representing Hayes, Delo and Reed did not immediately return requests for comment.
The reported pardens come just a day after Trump gave a pardon to Trevor Milton, the former CEO of Nikola Motors, who was previously convicted of fraud in 2022. In January, Trump gave up well on many years of promises to pardon Silk Road creator Ross Ulbricht, who was 11 years in a drakonic sentence of double life in prison plus 40 years without a couple. Since Ulbricht’s pardon, the former FTX CEO and convicted scammer Sam Bankman-Fred has been angling after his own pardon, tried to curry advantage with the Trump administration and performed on Tucker Carlson in an unauthorized jail house interview that landed him in solitary confinement.
Former Binance – CEO Changpen “CZ” Zhao, who pleaded guilty to the same prosecutor as Hayes and sentenced four months in prison last year – which made him not only the richest person who has ever gone to jail in the United States, but also the only person who has ever served prison time to violate BSA – has refused reports that he is also seeking a pardon from President Trump.
But Zhao admitted in a recent X -post that “no criminal would mind a pardon, especially to be the only one in the United States history ever sentenced to prison for a single BSA appeal.”
