Former BitMEX Chief Asks Court for Probation, Not Jail

Former BitMEX co-founder and CEO Arthur Hayes is asking for no jail time and permission to live overseas in anticipation of his sentencing later this month.

Lawyers for the 37-year-old American entrepreneur filed a request for probation, with no home detention or community confinement, after he struck a plea deal that would result in a prison sentence of six to 12 months under federal guidelines, reported Bloomberg.

Hayes, along with former chief technology officer Samuel Reed and BitMEX co-founder Benjamin Delo, was fined $10 million for failure to establish an anti-money-laundering program at the exchange.

Former BitMEX CEO gets support from mother

Hayes received support from his mother and fans in the form of a 65-page proposal that includes “photographs and letters.” His lawyers have presented the submission to the judge.

“This is a landmark case that has already had an extraordinary and well-publicized impact on Mr. Hayes’s personal life and on the BitMEX business that he co-founded,” said the proposal.

Following the co-founders’ guilty plea in Feb, prosecutor Damian Williams said: “The opportunities and advantages of operating in the United States are legion, but they carry with them the obligation for those businesses to do their part to help in driving out crime and corruption.

“Arthur Hayes and Benjamin Delo built a company designed to flout those obligations; they willfully failed to implement and maintain even basic anti-money laundering policies. They allowed BitMEX to operate as a platform in the shadows of the financial markets. Today’s guilty pleas reflect this Office’s continued commitment to the investigation and prosecution of money laundering in the cryptocurrency sector.”

Hayes also made some bold predictions about gold and bitcoin (BTC) in March. In an article titled “Energy Cancelled,” he wrote about the future of finance and expects gold to reach the $10,000 mark while bitcoin could move towards $1 million following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.