Former CFO Of Seattle Uses $35 Million To Invest In Crypto Leading To Losses

Key Points:

• Nevin Shetty, a former CFO for a Seattle company, was charged with wire fraud in the United States District Court in Seattle.
• Shetty is accused of diverting nearly $35 million from the startup’s coffers to a cryptocurrency network under his own control, according to the indictment.
• Shetty faces a potential sentence of 20 years in jail if convicted of wire fraud.

According to a federal indictment handed by a grand jury on Wednesday, the former chief financial officer of a Seattle-based firm stole $35 million of his employer’s money without authorization and lost it by trading in bitcoin before the crypto market fell last year.

Nevin Shetty, 39, was appointed as CFO of fabric, a company that creates software systems for retail commerce, in March 2021.

Once the employer told him that he was being let go due to work performance issues, he discreetly stole the money and moved it to HighTower Treasury, a crypto platform he operated as a side business, according to the indictment.

Shetty reportedly moved a considerable sum of $35,000,100 from his employers to an account related to HighTower without the knowledge of any other employees inside the organization between April 1 and April 12, 2022.

The purported goal of this transaction was for HighTower to deploy the cash to investments in the cryptocurrency market’s decentralized finance (DeFi) sector.

His plan was to pay the firm 6% interest while keeping any earnings beyond that, but the $35 million investment quickly became nearly worthless, according to a press release by the US Attorney’s Office in Seattle.

When the startup discovered the embezzlement, it immediately reported it to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which launched an inquiry into the case. Shetty faces a potential sentence of 20 years in jail if convicted of wire fraud. He is scheduled to appear in court on May 25, 2023.

Prosecutors said that as the firm obtained hundreds of millions of dollars in startup investment, it developed a cautious approach to handling that money – a strategy that Shetty assisted in developing.

DISCLAIMER: The information on this website is provided as general market commentary and does not constitute investment advice. We encourage you to do your own research before investing.

Join us to keep track of news: https://linktr.ee/coincu

Harold

Coincu News