Two Hydrogen Technology executives jailed for manipulating HYDRO token price announces U.S. Department of Justice.
The U.S. Department of Justice announced on Tuesday that two executives of Hydrogen Technology were sentenced to imprisonment for manipulating the price of the HYDRO token in order to defraud investors.
According to a statement from the Department of Justice, CEO Michael Kane, 39, was sentenced to three years and nine months, while Shane Hampton, 32, the company’s chief of financial engineering, was sentenced to two years and 11 months.
The two enlisted a South African company named Moonwalkers Trading to manipulate the HYDRO price on an unidentified U.S.-based crypto exchange using a bot to place approximately $7 million of so-called wash trades and $300 million worth of spoof transactions between October 2018 and April 2019, according to the DOJ. The actions they took allowed them to generate $2 million in profits by selling HYDRO at inflated prices.
In November 2023, Kane, a resident of Miami Beach, entered a plea of guilty to securities price manipulation and wire fraud. On February 7, Hampton, a resident of Philadelphia, was found guilty of conspiracy to commit securities price manipulation and wire fraud.
Nicole M. Argentieri, the director of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, stated in a press release that the jury in this federal criminal trial determined that a cryptocurrency was a security and that manipulating cryptocurrency prices was securities fraud for the first time.
Hydrogen Technology was fined just under $2.8 million and Kane $260,206 by the U.S. District Court of the Southern District of New York last year for violating securities law in a case brought by the Securities and Exchange Commission.
In May 2023, Andrew Chorlian and Tyler Ostern, two additional co-conspirators, entered guilty pleas to securities price manipulation and wire fraud offenses. They have already been sentenced, according to the press release.
