Prosecutors Charge Two Crypto ‘Market Makers,’ Employees With Market Manipulation, Fraud

Federal prosecutors charged two purported market makers, a handful of crypto projects, and over a dozen individuals with manipulating various crypto markets Wednesday, saying they profited from fees and selling manipulated coins at elevated values.

According to charging documents unsealed Wednesday, Gotbit and ZM Quant wash traded various tokens to make it appear they had more legitimate activity than they actually did, selling some of these tokens at "artificially inflated prices" to others, marketing these coins on various platforms and convincing exchanges to let them buy tokens with reduced fees.

Prosecutors say that both Gotbit and ZM Quant publicly claimed to be legitimate market makers offering legal services, but privately offered clients illegal services including wash trading.

At least in Gotbit’s case, the illegal offerings weren’t actually all that private: in 2019, Gobit co-founder Alexey Andryunin, then a 20-year-old college sophomore, explained to CoinDesk exactly how the wash trading services he offered his clients worked. He was blunt about the questionable nature of his business, admitting that Gotbit was not registered in any jurisdiction because it was “not entirely ethical.”

ZMQuant was registered in the British Virgin Islands, but the employees named in its indictment were based in Hong Kong. Though Gotbit was not registered anywhere, it's employees are believed to be Russian.

The list of manipulated tokens included Robo Inu, which pumped after the indictment was unsealed. Other named defendants include VZZN, NextFundAI, and Saitama. According to the indictments, each token – including Robo Inu – is classified as a security. Several of the people behind the projects, including Robo Inu founder Vy Pham, have also been named as defendants.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) unveiled parallel civil charges against Gotbit and its employee director Fedor Kedrov, a Russian resident, on Wednesday afternoon.