No Prison Time for BitMEX Co-Founder Benjamin Delo, Sentenced to 30 Months Probation

BitMEX co-founder Benjamin Delo was sentenced to 30 months probation without home confinement on June 15 for violating US anti-money-laundering law.

• Delo, sentenced in a New York federal court, managed to evade a jail term. He will also be allowed to return to his Hong Kong home, which he shares with his wife.
• He told US District Judge John Koeltl that it was a terrible decision not to act sooner to ensure BitMEX was not serving the users of the country.
• His defense lawyer, Patrick Smith, argued that the former exec was involved in a criminal compliance failure. However, Smith noted that BitMEX was not designed to bypass the law and added that Delo had personally banned hundreds of users with a connection to the US.
• BitMEX co-founders Arthur Hayes and Samuel Reed, along with the exchange’s first official employee Gregory Dwyer were charged with similar violations for evading the country’s anti-money laundering requirement.
• The prosecution, who had sought a harsher sentence for Hayes, contended that Delo should serve a year in prison or at least receive two-year probation.
• Similar to the latest sentencing, Hayes, too, avoided a jail term and received six months of home detention as part of a two-year probationary period.
• Both Delo and Hayes paid a $10 million penalty as part of a deal with prosecutors and the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC).
• The latest sentencing marks the conclusion of the long-running legal saga that the crypto derivatives platform was embroiled in since 2020.

Featured Image Courtesy of The Times