U.S. President Donald Trump has reportedly granted pardons to three co-founders of the cryptocurrency exchange, BitMEX.
The co-founders, Benjamin Delo, Samuel Reed, and former CEO Arthur Hayes, had already entered guilty pleas to several federal criminal offenses about money laundering and failed to police the transaction.
Prosecutors charged them with operating the platform as a “money laundering exchange” and deceiving authorities regarding their activities in the U.S. Even after denials of withdrawal from the U.S. market, authorities maintained that the company continued to serve American users without adequate compliance verification.
In 2022, Hayes and Delo admitted to failing to establish an AML program and were sentenced to probation—Delo for 30 months and Hayes to six months of home confinement followed by two years of probation.
Reed, the company’s former chief technology officer, was sentenced to 18 months of probation and fined $10 million. BitMEX itself was ordered to pay a $100 million fine for its violations.
Besides the co-founders of BitMEX, Trump pardoned Trevor Milton, the ex-CEO and founder of electric vehicle maker Nikola.
Milton had been convicted of securities fraud after defrauding investors in Nikola’s supposed technological abilities, causing a loss of millions of dollars. He had been sentenced to four years behind bars but was still at liberty on appeal.
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