Close Ally of FTX Founder Sam Bankman-Fried Pleads Guilty to Fraud

A third member of FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried’s inner circle pleaded guilty to fraud charges and agreed to assist federal prosecutors, expanding the pool of cooperating witnesses against the former head of the failed crypto exchange.

Nishad Singh, the company’s former director of engineering, pleaded guilty to six criminal counts, including conspiring to commit securities and commodities fraud, during a hearing Tuesday in federal court in Manhattan. 

“I’m unbelievably sorry for my role in all of this and the harm that it has caused,” Mr. Singh, 27 years old, told U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan.

Mr. Singh said that in mid-2022 he learned that Mr. Bankman-Fried’s crypto hedge fund Alameda Research was borrowing FTX customer funds. By September 2022, Alameda was no longer able to repay the billions of dollars that it had taken from FTX, Mr. Singh said. He said that, at the direction of Mr. Bankman-Fried, he falsified FTX’s revenues to make the company more appealing to investors.