Ten foreign nationals charged in an international operation targeting cryptocurrency market manipulation

Date: March 30, 2026

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Oakland - Federal grand juries indicted ten executives and employees of four different cryptocurrency financial services firms (known as "market makers") for orchestrating fraud schemes to artificially inflate the trading volume and price of cryptocurrencies. Three defendants, including two chief executive officers, were arrested and extradited from Singapore and made their initial appearance in federal court in Oakland today.

Employees from the four firms, Gotbit, Vortex, Antier, and Contrarian, have been charged in three separate indictments. The indictments allege that the defendants not only conspired to inflate the trading volume and price of cryptocurrencies but also profited through the sale of the cryptocurrencies at inflated prices to unwitting investors. These so-called pump-and-dump schemes caused losses to investors in the United States and elsewhere. In addition to the three extradited defendants, two others have already pled guilty and were sentenced by U.S. District Court Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín. More than $1 million in cryptocurrency has been seized to date.

The indictments and arrests were the result of an undercover operation by IRS Criminal Investigation (IRS-CI) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) targeting illicit "wash trading" in the cryptocurrency industry. As part of the undercover operation, the FBI created several cryptocurrency tokens.

According to the indictments, all of the schemes followed a similar pattern. The defendants acted as illicit market makers by "wash trading" the cryptocurrency to artificially inflate the trading volume and price. As described in the indictment, wash trading occurs when a single trader, or a number of traders, working in coordination, act as both the buyer and the seller in the same transaction or a series of transactions. This fraudulent trading tactic creates the appearance that these cryptocurrencies have more active, organic trading than really exists, thereby inducing investors to purchase the cryptocurrencies at artificially inflated prices.

On March 25, 2025, a federal grand jury in San Francisco, California indicted Taiwanese national Antoine Tsao (Business Development Manager for Gotbit), Russian national Ian Sofronov (Sales Manager for Gotbit), and Serbian national Nemanja Popov (Account Manager for Gotbit) on charges of wire fraud conspiracy and wire fraud for a scheme to artificially inflate the price of a cryptocurrency token. Tsao was arrested at John F. Kennedy International Airport on March 30, 2025. On June 2, 2025, Tsao pled guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud and was sentenced by U.S. District Court Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín in Oakland, California. Nemanja Popov was arrested at San Francisco International Airport, and pled guilty and was sentenced on Feb. 10, 2026, by U.S. District Court Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín.

On Aug. 28, 2025, a federal grand jury in Oakland, California indicted Russian nationals Gleb Gora (Chief Executive Officer of Vortex), Sergei Ryzhkov (Chief Financial Officer of Vortex), and Michael Vogel (Business Development Manager for Vortex) on charges of wire fraud conspiracy and wire fraud for a scheme to artificially inflate the price of a cryptocurrency token while planning to liquidate their holdings once trading reached a high price. Gora was arrested in Singapore on Oct. 2, 2025, at the request of the United States. Gora made his initial appearance before a U.S. Magistrate Judge today in Oakland following his extradition from Singapore.

On Sept. 4, 2025, a federal grand jury in Oakland, California, indicted Indian nationals Manu Singh (Chief Executive Officer of Contrarian), Kushagra Srivastava (Chief Financial Officer of Contrarian), Vasu Sharma (Business Development Associate at Contrarian), and Sabby Singh, a Business Development Manager at a Contrarian partner firm Antier Solutions Private Limited. The defendants were charged with wire fraud and wire fraud conspiracy for a scheme to pump up the price of a cryptocurrency token while at the same time planning to dump their holdings of the token when it reached a high trading price. Defendants Manu Singh and Vasu Sharma were arrested in Singapore on Oct. 2, 2025, at the request of the United States, and made their initial appearances before a U.S. Magistrate Judge today in Oakland following their extradition from Singapore.

Defendants Gora, Singh, and Sharma are currently in federal custody.

United States Attorney Craig H. Missakian, IRS-CI Oakland Field Office Special Agent in Charge Linda Nguyen, and FBI Acting Special Agent in Charge Matt Cobo made the announcement.

Valuable assistance was provided by the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Law Enforcement Attaché's Office in Singapore and the Justice Department's Office of International Affairs, working with the Singapore Police Force and Attorney General's Chambers, for securing the arrests and extraditions of Gora, Singh, and Sharma to the United States.

An indictment merely alleges that crimes have been committed, and all defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. If convicted, the defendants face a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison and a fine of $250,000 for each violation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 1343 and 1349. Any sentence following conviction would be imposed by the court after consideration of the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and the federal statute governing the imposition of a sentence, 18 U.S.C. § 3553.

Assistant U.S. Attorneys Benjamin K. Kleinman, Daniel M. Pastor, and Molly K. Priedeman are prosecuting the cases with the assistance of Amala James. The prosecution is the result of an investigation led by the FBI with the assistance of IRS-CI.

IRS-CI is the law enforcement arm of the IRS, responsible for conducting financial crime investigations, including tax fraud, narcotics trafficking, money laundering, public corruption, healthcare fraud, identity theft and more. It is the only federal law enforcement agency with investigative jurisdiction over violations of the Internal Revenue Code. IRS-CI has 18 field offices located across the U.S. and maintains an international presence through attaché posts abroad.