Arthur Hayes, chief executive officer of BitMEX, speaks during the Consensus: Invest event in New York, U.S., on Tuesday, Nov. 28, 2017.
Michael Nagle | Bloomberg | Getty Images
President Donald Trump has granted pardons to three co-founders of the BitMEX cryptocurrency exchange, CNBC has learned.
The co-founders, former CEO Arthur Hayes, Benjamin Delo and Samuel Reed, previously pled guilty to a range of federal criminal charges related to money laundering and failure to police the exchange.
The trio received criminal sentences of probation, and ordered to pay civil fines totaling $30 million.
Prosecutors accused the men of effectively operating BitMEX as a “money laundering platform” and that its purported withdrawal from the U.S. market was “a sham.”
Trump issued the pardons on Thursday, more than three months after BitMEX was sentenced to pay a fine of $100 million for violating the Bank Secrecy Act by failing to establish and maintain anti-money-laundering and “know your customer” programs.
Delo, the former chief operating officer and chief strategy officer of BitMEX, had been sentenced to 30 months of probation after his guilty plea in U.S. District Court in Manhattan.
Hayes was sentenced to six months of home confinement, followed by two years of probation.
Reed, who is the exchange’s former chief technology officer, was sentenced to 18 months of probation.
Trevor Milton, the founder and former CEO of electric truck maker Nikola, revealed Thursday night that Trump had pardoned him for his criminal conviction for securities fraud. Milton had been sentenced to four years in prison in that case, but remained free on appeal.
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