The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) moved on March 30, 2026. Federal grand juries indicted ten executives and employees of four cryptocurrency firms. The charges center on artificially inflating token prices and trading volumes to deceive retail investors.
Three defendants appeared in federal court in Oakland that same day. They had just landed. All three were extradited from Singapore.
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Four Firms. One Very Old Playbook.
The firms named across three separate indictments are Gotbit, Vortex, Antier, and Contrarian. All four operated as crypto market makers. The indictments allege they ran fabricated markets, not real ones.
The scheme worked the same way each time. Defendants acted as both buyers and sellers in the same trades. That practice is called wash trading. It fakes organic volume. Investors see activity, buy in at inflated prices, then the defendants exit.
As Myrick Matthew reported on CryptoNewsLive, the accused firms did not simply provide liquidity to markets. They rigged it. The DOJ press release confirmed more than $1 million in cryptocurrency has been seized. Two defendants already pleaded guilty and were sentenced by U.S. District Court Judge Araceli Martinez-Olguín.
Who Was Arrested and From Where
The Gotbit indictment, filed March 2025, named Antoine Tsao of Taiwan, Ian Sofronov of Russia, and Nemanja Popov of Serbia. Tsao was arrested at JFK Airport that same month. Popov pleaded guilty and was sentenced in February 2026.
Vortex CEO Gleb Gora, 24, a Russian national, was indicted in August 2025. He was arrested in Singapore in October 2025 and extradited to Oakland. His CFO Sergei Ryzhkov and business development manager Michael Vogel were also named.
The Contrarian indictment filed September 2025 targeted CEO Manu Singh, 34, CFO Kushagra Srivastava, associate Vasu Sharma, 26, and Sabby Singh of partner firm Antier Solutions. Singh and Sharma were arrested in Singapore in October 2025 alongside Gora. All three appeared before a U.S. Magistrate Judge in Oakland on March 30.
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The @USDOJ_Intl account on X confirmed the charges, noting that three of the ten defendants, including two CEOs, were arrested in Singapore and brought to the United States to face prosecution. As @AshCrypto stated on X, the accused firms pumped prices with fabricated volume, trapped retail buyers at elevated levels, then sold out their positions.
The FBI Built Its Own Tokens as Bait
The FBI and IRS Criminal Investigation ran a joint undercover operation. They created several cryptocurrency tokens specifically designed to draw out firms running wash trading schemes. The operation worked.
CryptoNewsLive further noted the prosecution marks one of the broadest enforcement actions against crypto market manipulation to date. United States Attorney Craig H. Missakian, FBI Acting Special Agent in Charge Matt Cobo, and IRS-CI Oakland Field Office Special Agent in Charge Linda Nguyen announced the charges together. Singapore’s Police Force and its Attorney General’s Chambers helped coordinate all three extraditions.
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Each defendant faces up to 20 years in prison and fines up to $250,000 per violation if convicted. The prosecution is led by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Benjamin K. Kleinman, Daniel M. Pastor, and Molly K. Priedeman. All defendants remain presumed innocent.
Retail crypto investors absorbed the losses. That part is not disputed.
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