Ian McGinley Quoted by Law360 on Crypto Insider Trading Case
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In “Ex-Coinbase Worker's Brother Cops To Crypto Insider Trading,” Law360 quotes Akin Gump white collar defense and government investigations partner Ian McGinley on the government’s use of wire fraud in crypto insider trading cases.
The article discusses a guilty plea to wire fraud conspiracy entered by the brother of a former product manager for a cryptocurrency exchange platform. The product manager is accused of having passed information to his brother in a $1.5 million scheme to trade on crypto tokens. Law360 reports this being the first guilty plea ever entered in a cryptocurrency insider trading case.
McGinley—who served for more than a decade as Co-Chief of the Complex Frauds and Cybercrime Unit, and as a member of the Securities and Commodities Fraud Task Force, at the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of N.Y.—said this wire fraud plea could help prosecutors combat a defense raised in recent cyber prosecutions that crypto is neither securities nor commodities.
McGinley said, “What's significant about this plea is it's an endorsement of the government's use of wire fraud in crypto insider trading cases. It certainly adds to the atmosphere that the government is correct in its use of wire fraud.”
In August, Reuters published “Wire fraud: the most powerful law in crypto right now,” an article by McGinley. Click here to read.