FTX Cofounder Who Was Allegedly in Groupchat Called "Wirefraud" Pleads Guilty to Wire Fraud

"I'm unbelievably sorry for my role in all of this."

Friendly Fire

Nishad Singh, a cofounder and former Director of Engineering of the now-bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange FTX, officially pled guilty to six federal charges on Tuesday.

Among other charges, Singh admitted to committing wire fraud. This would be less surprising if Singh hadn't been one of the four members of a secret FTX exec Signal chat allegedly called "wirefraud."

“I'm unbelievably sorry for my role in all of this," Singh told the Manhattan courtroom on Tuesday, according to The Wall Street Journal, "and the harm that it has caused."

With the exception of disgraced ex-FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, who's currently on house arrest at his parent's multi-million dollar Palo Alto pad awaiting criminal trial, Singh is the last of the "wirefraud" kids — a group that also included Tumblr queen Caroline Ellison, former Alameda Research CEO and Bankman-Fried's rumored ex-girlfriend, and FTX cofounder Gary Wang — to plead guilty to multiple charges.

As a result, Singh may have to testify against SBF, the only one of the group who seemingly wants to fight the charges. And while it surely won't be fun for any of SBF's friends and former coworkers to take the stand against him, for Singh, it might just sting the worst. According to the WSJ, the two have been friends for years, going back to grade school.

We Go Back

As the WSJ tells it, Singh — widely regarded as the nicest, most approachable member of the FTX inner circle — was actually close high school friends with Bankman-Fried's younger brother, Gabe. He joined Alameda, the SBF-founded crypto hedge fund, shortly after graduating from The University of California, Berkley with top honors.

The engineer ultimately went on to help Bankman-Fried architect FTX, which launched in 2019. And the rest, as they say, was short-lived, chaotic, and spectacularly disastrous history.

Per the WSJ, a lawsuit filed Tuesday by the Securities and Exchange Commission details that Singh wrote the code that, as the WSJ puts it, "allowed Bankman-Fried to divert FTX customer funds" to Alameda. Singh has also apparently admitted to knowing about the misappropriation of customer funds.

The WSJ further notes that a number of FTX employees were shocked to discover that Singh, seen by so many as one of the nice guys, was involved in any wrongdoing. But, hey. Bankman-Fried seemed pretty nice, too.

READ MORE: How FTX's Nishad Singh, Once an Honors Student, Turned to Crypto Crime [The Wall Street Journal]

More on groupchats: SBF and Caroline Ellison Allegedly Had a Secret Groupchat Called "Wirefraud"