One of the top executives of the collapsed crypto exchange FTX was sentenced to time served on Wednesday by a federal judge in New York.
Nishad Singh smiled as U.S. District Court Judge Lewis Kaplan of the Southern District of New York imposed the sentence.
“You didn’t try to figure out the spectrum of options,” Kaplan told the 29-year-old. “You did the right thing. You very quickly, within days, told the truth.”
Kaplan imposed three years of supervised release and $11,020,000,000 forfeiture but declined to impose restitution.
Before leaving the bench, the judge turned to Singh’s parents, who were seated in the front row along with his fiancee and extended family.
“This is purely personal,” Kaplan said to his mother and father. “I don’t see anything you did wrong.”
Singh served as the former chief engineer of FTX. Prosecutors with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York have described his cooperation as key in not only charging Sam Bankman-Fried and others but in securing a conviction in the case.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Nicholas Roos on Wednesday said that, following the collapse, Singh walked into the office—before he’d been contacted or threatened with charges—and then “proceeded to incriminate himself in serious crimes” the government didn’t know about.
Roos said Singh alerted the government to both a massive campaign violation scheme and a securities fraud scheme of which they were not yet aware.
Defense attorney Andrew Goldstein of Cooley said his client was “in the dark, he was not part of the inner circle.”
Singh, he said, learned of the “main conspiracy after all the conduct occurred” and will “forever regret the role he played.”
“I strayed so far,” Singh said in addressing the court. “But I am committed to living a life of tangible, robust good.”
Singh pleaded guilty to counts of fraud and conspiracy in February 2023 and served as a prosecution witness against his former boss, Bankman Fried.
Goldstein declined to comment following the sentencing.