Key takeaways
- The founder and former CEO of Digitex Futures Exchange entered a guilty plea in federal court for the company’s inability to implement an anti-money laundering program.
- After a data breach at Digitex in 2020, Todd declared that there would be “no KYC identity verification” requirements of any type.
Adam Todd, the founder and former CEO of Digitex Futures Exchange, entered a guilty plea in federal court for the company’s inability to implement an anti-money laundering program.
The US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida announced on May 7 that Todd had entered a guilty plea to “willfully causing” Digitex to violate the Bank Secrecy Act.
In February, the authorities charged the former CEO. The indictment claims that between 2018 and 2022, Todd ran an unregistered futures platform for US clients while neglecting to establish and maintain AML and Know Your Customer (KYC) procedures.
The sentencing hearing date for Todd was not disclosed by the US Attorney’s Office. As per his LinkedIn page, he resigned from his position as the exchange’s CEO in October 2022 and has been employed at Digitex Games as a lead developer since February 2023.
After a data breach at Digitex in 2020, Todd declared that there would be “no KYC identity verification” requirements of any type. It has been alleged that a former exchange employee took data from numerous users’ driver’s licenses and passports.
According to Digitex, they requested users to verify that they were not situated in the US and were barring US IP addresses. In 2022, the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) brought legal action against Todd and Digitex. The CFTC won its lawsuit the following year, obtaining an order for disgorgement and penalties totaling $16 million.
The head of Binance’s financial crime compliance team, Tigran Gambaryan, has been detained; Binance CEO Richard Teng has appealed to the Nigerian government to free him promptly.
Teng expressed serious worry over Gambaryan’s more than 70-day protracted arrest and denounced the Nigerian government’s stance in a comprehensive blog post on May 7. On May 17, Gambaryan is scheduled to go on trial for offenses including tax evasion, currency speculation, and money laundering.
