Benjamin Delo Avoids Prison Time And Got 30 Months Probation Instead

Benjamin Delo avoids prison time and managed to get 30 months probation instead after settling for $10 million with the CFTC so let’s have a closer look at today’s latest cryptocurrency news.

The BitMEX co-founder Benjamin Delo avoids prison time and got a sentence of 30 months probation by the New York Federal court for violating the AML Banking Secrecy Act. The sentence concludes Delo’s part in the BitMEX legal saga which was ongoing since October 2020 and Delo will also return home to his wife in Hong Kong in the days where he will serve his probation. Delo and Arthur Hayes both pleaded guilty to failing to establish, implement and maintain an AML program.

In May, Delo and the other co-founders Samuel Reed and Arhut Hayes were ordered to pay $10 million each by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission for violating AML laws and Delo paid his part in full. The federal prosecutors charged the trio for failing to establish KYC procedures for their US Customer base which meant that the exchange served as a money-laundering platform that services $209 million in shady transactions.

Delo’s Lawyer Patrick Smith argued that Delo banned hundreds of users from trading ont the exchange but he confessed that he wished he had acted sooner to ensure the exchange was no longer serving these US customers. Samuel Reed joined Delo and Hayes pleaded guilty to violating the Bank Secrecy Act and now he faces a maximum jail sentence of five years. Like Delo, Hayes was put on probation and the prosecutors sought to have him jailed initially for a year but Hayes argued that his case could be a precedent in the future so he has been ordered to spend the first six months in home confinement.

Australian BTC mogul Greg Dwyer who is not among the founders of BitMEX, but served as the head of business development is now in negotiation with the New York Federal court to extend the deadline for filing pre-trial documentation by a week.

As recently reported, The global crypto derivatives exchange BitMEX is expanding the platform beyond just derivatives and launched a spot crypto trading platform. BitMEX launched spot exchange trading options on May 17 and said the platform is now live, allowing retail and institutional investors to buy and sell cryptos like BTC and ETH. The exchange supports seven pairs of crypto including ETH, BTC, LINK, UNI, MATIC, and AXS< APE all trading against Tether’s USDT.