オンチェーン、法廷へ：今週の暗号資産関連の法務ニュースで何が起きたか
重要ポイント
- •CFTCの同意命令により、Caroline Ellison氏とGary Wang氏に5年間の取引禁止が科され、さらにEllison氏には10年間、Wang氏には8年間の登録禁止が課された。これでFTXの2022年破綻に関連する規制当局の民事案件は決着した。
- •両氏は刑事責任を認め、Sam Bankman-Fried氏に対する政府側の主要な協力証人となり、別個の刑事手続きではEllison氏に2年の禁錮刑、Wang氏に拘束済み期間相当の判決が言い渡された。
- •米検察当局は、Gannon Ken Van Dyke被告のPolymarket関連の訴追棄却申立ては推測に基づく主張に依拠していると反論した。この事件は、Commodity Exchange Actがイベント契約にどう適用されるかを試す初期事例とみられている。
- •ジョージア州の判事は、推定1億6500万ドル規模の暗号資産ポンジ・スキームに関与したとされるEdward Zimbardi被告への25件の起訴状を開示した。被告はFijiから送還されている。
- •検察当局はZimbardi事件で、2024年にオランダ当局が押収した複数の暗号資産を含む、約600万ドル相当の資産没収を求めている。
Update (Aug. 21, 9:50 pm UTC): This article has been updated to include information about the criminal case against Edward Zimbardi.
Former Alameda Research and FTX executives receive five-year trading bans
On Tuesday, the US District Court for the Southern District of New York (SDNY) entered consent orders tied to a 2022 enforcement action against former Alameda Research CEO Caroline Ellison and crypto exchange FTX co-founder Zixiao “Gary” Wang.
The orders, issued by the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), require Ellison and Wang to serve five-year trading bans connected to their roles in the collapse of the crypto exchange. The CFTC also imposed a 10-year registration ban on Ellison and an eight-year registration ban on Wang.
The consent orders resolve the CFTC’s civil track stemming from FTX’s November 2022 bankruptcy, which followed the discovery that customer funds had been funneled to Alameda. Both executives pleaded guilty to criminal charges and became the government’s key cooperating witnesses against FTX co-founder Sam Bankman-Fried, who was sentenced to 25 years in prison in 2024.
According to CFTC enforcement director David Miller, the orders reflected Wang’s and Ellison’s “material assistance in the Commission’s FTX-related investigations.” The civil case is separate from the criminal cases involving the misuse of customer funds at FTX, in which Ellison was sentenced to two years in prison and Wang received time served.
US prosecutors oppose Polymarket trader’s bid to dismiss Maduro-related case
On Wednesday, lawyers for the US government in SDNY filed their opposition to a motion to dismiss from Gannon Ken Van Dyke, a US soldier who allegedly made more than $400,000 using event contracts on the prediction market platform Polymarket based on nonpublic information. Van Dyke was tied to the military operation that removed Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in January.
Related: Judge stays CFTC’s case against US soldier over prediction market bets
The dispute is an early test of how the decades-old Commodity Exchange Act applies to event contracts, a market that drew billions of dollars in wagers during the 2024 US election cycle. Polymarket itself paid a $1.4 million penalty in a 2022 CFTC settlement for offering event markets without registration, and a related CFTC civil action over the same bets — stayed by a judge — runs alongside the criminal prosecution.
Van Dyke’s motion to dismiss, filed on July 31, argued that the Commodity Exchange Act, which is at the center of three of the charges he faces, was “ambiguous” in treating event contracts as “swaps” under the CFTC’s jurisdiction. In Wednesday’s filing, the US government said Van Dyke “advances hypotheticals, edge cases, and ongoing litigation over state gaming laws” that are unnecessary to resolve at this stage of the case.
“Van Dyke’s motion asks the Court to make a factual determination not appropriate at the motion-to-dismiss stage,” SDNY Deputy US Attorney Sean Buckley said. “His argument relies on speculative assertions about facts, based on improper inferences from the Indictment and incorrect conclusions about the nature of the charge, to claim that facts do not amount to ‘property.’”
As of Friday, the court had not posted any decision on the motion to the public docket.
Judge unseals 25-count indictment against alleged $165 million crypto fraudster
On Monday, a Georgia judge ordered an indictment unsealed in a case involving a man allegedly behind a $165 million cryptocurrency Ponzi scheme.
Edward Zimbardi, who was initially indicted on July 8, will face wire fraud and money laundering charges in the Northern District of Georgia after being deported from Fiji, where he fled after allegedly carrying out the scheme. Prosecutors said Zimbardi “tricked thousands of people to invest in his ‘Crypto Program’ with false promises of enormous returns.”
Magistrate Judge Anna Howard ordered the indictment unsealed this week, revealing that Zimbardi is charged with 12 counts of wire fraud, one count of money laundering conspiracy and 11 counts of transactional money laundering based on activities connected to the Crypto Program between 2022 and 2023.
Prosecutors are also seeking forfeiture of the proceeds from Zimbardi’s alleged wire fraud and money laundering, as well as crypto already seized if there is a conviction. The indictment listed 11.87 Bitcoin (BTC), 2.15 Ether (ETH), 713,344,695 Shiba Inu (SHIB), 47,110 USDt (USDT), 12,095 USDT0, 3.3 million XRP, 1,095 Dogecoin (DOGE), 10.2 million Osaka Protocol (OSAK) and 11.97 Polygon (POL) seized by Dutch authorities in 2024, with a combined value of about $6 million.
The case joins a steady run of crypto Ponzi prosecutions — a category US enforcement agencies repeatedly identify as a leading source of fraud losses — and Zimbardi will now answer the 25 counts in a Georgia federal courtroom.
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