Judge Loretta Preska of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York sentenced former Coinbase product manager Ishan Vahi to two years in prison. Reuters reports.
In February, he pleaded guilty to two counts of insider trading. Vahi faced up to 40 years in prison. Prosecutors sought three years.
“I made a huge mistake that will stay with me for the rest of my life,” he told the court.
Since October 2020, Ishan Vahi worked on Coinbase’s listing. From June 2021 to April 2022, he violated platform confidentiality rules and provided insider information to his brother Nihil Vahi and his partner Samir Ramani.
In July 2022, authorities arrested all three. They were charged with conspiracy to commit fraud in connection with an insider-trading scheme for crypto assets, which yielded at least $1.5 million in profits.
In September, Nihil Vahi pleaded guilty. He agreed with the investigators’ theory that he traded on the basis of nonpublic information about Coinbase’s planned listing of digital assets. In January 2023, Nihil Vahi was sentenced to 10 months in prison.