Federal prosecutors have announced three indictments charging ten individuals tied to four financial services firms with cryptocurrency market manipulation schemes. The announcements were made on March 30, 2026, and the cases were filed separately between March and September 2025 as part of Operation Token Mirrors, according to a case summary published by TRM Labs ().

The defendants are linked to the firms GOTBIT, Vortex, Antier, and Contrarian. The charges include wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud. Several defendants have pleaded guilty, while other cases have involved arrests and extraditions. The indictments remain allegations, and convictions have not been reported for every person charged.

Charges Span Four Firms

The GOTBIT indictment names Antoine Tsao, Ian Sofronov, and Nemanja Popov, charging each with conspiracy to commit wire fraud and two counts of wire fraud. Tsao, also identified as Chung Tien Tsao, was arrested at John F. Kennedy International Airport on March 30, 2025. He pleaded guilty to conspiracy on June 2, 2025, and was sentenced by U.S. District Court Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín in Oakland, California. Popov was arrested at San Francisco International Airport, pleaded guilty, and was sentenced on February 10, 2026. The case summary does not state sentencing details for either man.

The Vortex indictment charges Gleb Gora, Sergei Ryzhkov, and Michael Vogel with conspiracy to commit wire fraud and wire fraud. Gora was arrested in Singapore on October 2, 2025, at the request of the United States, an arrest that reflects the cross-border reach of the investigation. After his extradition, he made an initial appearance before a U.S. magistrate judge in Oakland, according to the summary.

A separate indictment concerning Contrarian and Antier Solutions Private Limited charges Manu Singh, Kushagra Srivastava, Vasu Sharma, and Sabby Singh with wire fraud and wire fraud conspiracy. Singh and Sharma were arrested in Singapore on October 2, 2025, and made initial appearances in Oakland on Monday; the summary does not identify the date of those appearances.

Alleged Wash Trading Scheme

According to the indictment as summarized by TRM Labs, GOTBIT allegedly sold wash trading services to token projects. Wash trading involves transactions in which the same party controls both sides of a trade, producing volume that does not reflect genuine market demand; trading volume is one of the metrics market participants commonly use to assess a token's activity. Customers paid approximately USD 5,000 per month for activity intended to create the appearance of organic trading volume. Prosecutors allege that this false signal could induce retail investors to buy tokens while the projects profited from sales at artificially inflated prices.

Investigators used blockchain analysis and undercover operations. Agents approached GOTBIT executives about market-making for Lexobit, and executives were quoted as saying they "take 2% from liquidations and don't judge." Lexobit was included in the indictment but has not been reported as a court finding.

Investigators traced 1,221 transactions associated with GOTBIT wallets; 1,209, or 99%, traced back those wallets. The government also created token projects for undercover work. These details come from the case summary rather than separate adjudicated findings.

Forfeiture Follows Guilty Plea

The summary reports that a court entered a preliminary forfeiture order against Tsao on June 3, 2025, covering 1.2 million in USDT tokens. The order was preliminary, meaning it precedes the case's final resolution. The address at issue received USD 15,000 from undercover agents for GOTBIT's services and later received 5 ETH to fund trading-bot deployment. These are described as assets tied to the alleged scheme.

The cases bring together charges across four firms, but individual defendants have reached different procedural outcomes. Tsao and Popov pleaded guilty; Gora's case has advanced through extradition and an initial appearance; and Singh and Sharma have been arrested and have court appearances. The indictments were announced together on March 30, 2026, after filings between March and September 2025. The reported record includes charges, guilty pleas, arrests, extradition, and forfeiture, but no final outcome has been reported for every defendant. Further proceedings in the Northern District of California, where the cases have been filed, will resolve the outstanding charges against defendants whose cases remain pending.