By Danielle Kaye and David Yaffe-Bellany
Nishad Singh, who was a top adviser to disgraced cryptocurrency mogul Sam Bankman-Fried, avoided prison time for his role in the collapse of the FTX crypto exchange, after a federal judge earlier this week lauded his cooperation with U.S. prosecutors.
Singh, 29, was sentenced to three years of supervised release at a hearing in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, an unexpected reprieve after Bankman-Fried and two other FTX executives received long sentences. Judge Lewis A. Kaplan, who has presided over the cases, said that Singh provided crucial assistance to the government and that he had played a “much more limited” role in the scheme than his colleagues had.
“I’m not foolish enough to think there was no self interest involved,” Kaplan said of Singh’s cooperation. “But you did the right thing.”
Not long after FTX failed in November 2022, Singh pleaded guilty to participating in the fraud that drained $8 billion from customers’ accounts. He also admitted to breaking campaign finance rules by serving as a so-called straw donor — making political donations in his name with money that actually came from the company. Lawyers for Singh had requested that he serve no prison time, while prosecutors also called for leniency.
Singh is one of several executives in Bankman-Fried’s former business empire who were charged with fraud. In March, Bankman-Fried, 32, was sentenced to 25 years in prison after his conviction at trial last year on seven counts of fraud and conspiracy.
The other executives who have been sentenced all pleaded guilty to various financial crimes. Caroline Ellison, another top lieutenant to Bankman-Fried, was sentenced to two years in prison at a hearing in federal court last month. Ryan Salame, an FTX executive, received a 7 1/2-year sentence in May for campaign finance violations. And Gary Wang, a fifth company leader, is scheduled to be sentenced on Nov. 20.
A graduate of the University of California, Berkeley, Singh joined Bankman-Fried’s crypto hedge fund Alameda Research in 2017 as a software engineer. After Bankman-Fried founded FTX, Singh rose to become one of the company’s top executives — and a billionaire on paper. Over the years, he made millions of dollars in campaign donations to support left-leaning political organizations.
At Bankman-Fried’s trial last fall, Singh testified at length about FTX’s collapse, saying that the company’s implosion had left him suicidal. Andrew Goldstein and Russell Capone, Singh’s lawyers, told the judge this month that he had provided “immediate and exemplary” cooperation.
Singh left FTX’s headquarters in the Bahamas before the company filed for bankruptcy, and he began taking screenshots of text messages that were critical to the government’s prosecution of Bankman-Fried, his lawyers said.
They also noted that Singh had not become aware of the conspiracy at the heart of the case — the theft of billions of dollars in user deposits — until just two months before the company unraveled.
“His role was far more limited than any other defendant,” the lawyers wrote. “He has done everything he can to try to make things right and turn his life around.”
That argument proved crucial to Singh’s sentence.
“Your case is not the case that Ms. Ellison’s was,” Kaplan said Wednesday. “She was involved from the beginning.”
Since FTX collapsed, Singh has lived in San Francisco with his fiancee, Claire Watanabe, who also worked at the exchange. He found full-time work as a software engineer at a private company, his lawyers said, and developed products that were recently featured at an artificial intelligence conference. (The company was not named in the filing.)
“Nishad has much to look forward to, both in the near and long terms, and is slowly becoming the happy young man he once was,” his lawyer wrote.
Singh was joined in court Wednesday by his parents, his younger brother and Watanabe, as well as by a group of friends and extended family. “They have stood by my side despite everything,” he said in a short speech to the judge. “I aspire to be worthy of their love.”
Wearing a light gray suit with a dark red tie, Singh smiled when the sentence was read aloud, while his friends and family hugged one another and cried.
After issuing the sentence, Kaplan spoke directly to Singh’s parents, who were sitting in the front row, teary-eyed.
“I don’t see anything you did wrong,” he told them.
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