Former U.S. President Donald Trump has reportedly granted pardons to three co-founders of cryptocurrency exchange BitMEX, who had previously pleaded guilty to federal charges.
According to a March 28 report by CNBC, Trump issued pardons for Arthur Hayes, Benjamin Delo, and Samuel Reed, who were facing criminal charges related to money laundering and violations of the Bank Secrecy Act. In February 2022, Hayes and Delo admitted to “willfully failing to establish, implement, and maintain an Anti-Money Laundering program” at BitMEX. Reed entered a guilty plea a few weeks later.
As of the time of publication, the White House had not officially announced the pardons. Cointelegraph reached out to BitMEX for comment but had not received a response.
Since assuming office on January 20, Trump has granted several controversial pardons, including to over 1,500 individuals charged in connection with the January 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol riot. He also pardoned Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht, who had served more than 11 years in prison. Speculation has arisen regarding the possibility of a pardon for former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, who is serving a 25-year sentence for misusing customer funds and has reportedly sought favor with Trump and Republican lawmakers.
U.S. authorities charged Hayes, Delo, Reed, and BitMEX’s first employee, Gregory Dwyer, in 2020 for violations of the Bank Secrecy Act. Amid the legal proceedings, Hayes stepped down as BitMEX’s CEO.
The rationale behind Trump’s decision to pardon the BitMEX co-founders remains unclear. The three had already been sentenced in 2022 to penalties including home detention or probation. They were also ordered to pay $30 million in civil penalties as part of a settlement with the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC).
BitMEX had previously agreed to pay $100 million in consent payments to both the CFTC and the U.S. Financial Crimes Enforcement Center in 2021. In January 2024, a judge imposed a $100 million fine and two years of unsupervised probation on HDR Global Trading Limited, BitMEX’s parent company.