An ex-employee at the popular NFT platform OpenSea, Nate Chastain, is accused of fraud and money laundering. Each of these counts carries a max sentence of 20 years. However, a judge's sentence is yet to come.
Related: Fraudsters stole 15,000 ETH via Huobi fake group in Telegram
According to an announcement by the US Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York, Christian, who was a product manager at the company, was arrested on June 1 and will be presented in the Court.
Authorities say Chastain is charged in relation to a scheme to implement insider trading in non fungible tokens by using private data about which of the digital assets will be featured on the marketplace's homepage to make profit.
FBI Senior Executive Michael Driscoll says with the development of investment tools there are always those who want to gain by exploiting flaws.
According to the statement, Chastain, 31, used info available to him to secretly buy dozens of NFTs. Then, these tokens became featured and their prices increased. Allegedly, Chastain sold the assets up to five times higher than the original price. The DOJ release noted he used anonymous crypto wallets and accounts to hide his actions.