Third FTX Executive Pleads Guilty to Criminal Charges, Piling Pressure on SBF

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A third FTX executive has pleaded guilty to criminal charges, as the walls continue to close in on Sam Bankman-Fried.

Nishad Singh was the doomed exchange's head of engineering, and there had been multiple reports in recent weeks that he was looking to cut a plea deal.

FTX co-founder Gary Wang — and Caroline Ellison, the CEO of the platform's sister trading firm Alameda Research — have also entered guilty pleas.

Singh will now cooperate with prosecutors as they continue to compile a case against SBF, and a trial is due to begin in Manhattan in October.

According to Reuters, he said that he was "unbelievably sorry for his role in all of this" — and admitted that he knew in the middle of 2022 that Alameda Research had been borrowing customer funds from FTX without their knowledge.

The 27-year-old has also vowed to surrender any proceeds he made from his involvement in the scheme.

As well as one count of wire fraud and three counts of conspiracy to commit fraud, Singh has pleaded guilty to charges of conspiracy to commit money laundering — as well as one count of conspiracy to defraud the U.S. by violating campaign finance violations.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission have also both leapt into action following Singh's guilty plea — and are now pursuing charges of their own.

According to the SEC, Singh had created the software code that allowed FTX customer funds to be moved through a secret backdoor to Alameda Research.

Gurbir Grewal, the director of the SEC's division of enforcement, said in a statement:

"We allege that this was fraud, pure and simple: while on the one hand FTX touted its supposed effective risk mitigation measures to investors, on the other Mr Singh and his co-defendants were stealing customer funds using software code Mr Singh helped create."