On February 24, 2022, two of three founders of an off-shore cryptocurrency derivatives exchange, the Bitcoin Mercantile Exchange or “BitMEX,” pled guilty to violating the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) by failing to maintain an anti-money laundering program. Pursuant to their respective plea agreements, defendants Arthur Hayes and Benjamin Delo each agreed to pay a $10 million criminal fine and face up to five years in prison. The defendants’ guilty pleas were entered approximately one month before they were scheduled to stand trial in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York.
Hayes and Delo – along with two other BitMEX executives – were indicted in October 2020 for evading U.S. anti-money laundering rules. A Department of Justice (DOJ) press release announcing the charges detailed that BitMEX was required to register with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and to establish an adequate anti-money laundering program because it solicited and serviced U.S. traders. Despite these obligations, BitMEX had only nominal programs in place to combat money laundering which, according to DOJ, were “toothless or easily overridden to serve BitMEX’s bottom line goal of obtaining revenue through the U.S. market without regard to U.S. regulation.”
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