On Dec. 21, U.S. law enforcement officials from the Southern District of New York (SDNY), the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) revealed they imposed fraud charges against FTX co-founder Gary Wang and ex-Alameda Research CEO Caroline Ellison. After Wang’s and Ellison’s surrender announcement, the public has been wondering where FTX’s director of engineering, Nishad Singh, is located and whether or not he has come forward yet.
Following Ellison’s and Wang’s Guilty Plea, All Eyes Are Focused on 2 More Top FTX Execs
Reports stemming from the SDNY federal court, the CFTC, and the SEC indicate that FTX co-founder Zixiao (Gary) Wang and ex-Alameda Research CEO Caroline Ellison have pleaded guilty to fraud charges. According to the U.S. attorney Damian Williams, Ellison and Wang are cooperating with law enforcement officials in a plea bargain for lighter sentences.
In addition to the announcement on Wednesday, Williams urged others that were involved in FTX’s misconduct to come forward as soon as possible. “[Law enforcement] is moving quickly and our patience is not eternal,” Williams stressed. One person who was not mentioned in the most recent indictments against Ellison and Wang was FTX’s director of engineering Nishad Singh.
According to public documents, in 2017, Singh graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, with a Bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering and computer science engineering. He worked for Facebook for a total of five months in 2017, after graduating from college. Prior to his role as FTX’s director of engineering, Singh was the director of engineering at Alameda Research.
FTX director of engineering Nishad Singh’s location is unknown and it is not known if he has come forward to law enforcement yet. Only three FTX execs have come forward disclosing that they have snitched on SBF: Gary Wang, Ryan Salame, and Caroline Ellison.
It was well known that Singh was a very close member of Sam Bankman-Fried’s (SBF) inner circle and he’s been accused of misconduct in regard to FTX’s collapse. For instance, reports have detailed that Singh was allegedly part of SBF’s secret Signal chat channel called “Wirefraud.”
The Australian Financial Review’s United States correspondent Matthew Cranston said: “[AFR] has [learned] that FTX founders Sam Bankman-Fried and Zixiao ‘Gary’ Wang, along with FTX engineer Nishad Singh and former Alameda Research chief executive Caroline Ellison, used a chat group on Signal in the hope that the information would remain hidden.”
Records also show that Singh became a significant donor to the U.S. Democratic party and he donated $8 million during the 2022 midterm election cycle. Singh was the 34th largest Democrat donor, while his former boss SBF was the second largest Democrat donor under George Soros. Research also shows that Singh, alongside SBF and Wang, was responsible for FTX’s codebase, wallets, and trading engine.
Bloomberg reported that Singh allegedly “authored code that hid Alameda Research’s ballooning liabilities.” In the same report, the CFTC detailed that a great deal of FTX’s liabilities were hidden in a sub-account called the “Korean account,” which was reportedly used by SBF, Ellison, Wang, and Singh to obscure funds. Singh was also close to another FTX inner circle member named Ramnik Arora, and Singh was one of nine housemates that lived with SBF.
Singh once said that FTX was his “dream job,” and ever since FTX collapsed, no one has heard from the former FTX director of engineering. Singh’s and SBF’s good friend Arora, the head of product and investor relations, was also an important instrument to the FTX machine. Arora is described in reports as SBF’s “key lieutenant” and according to sources, he was the main executive who bolstered FTX’s relationships with Sequoia Capital and other investors.
An article published by The Information claims FTX’s Arora was “integral to FTX’s expansion,” and if it wasn’t for Arora’s efforts, FTX may not have raised as much money as it did. Like Singh, no one has heard from Arora yet, either, and whether or not he has come forward to address issues with U.S. law enforcement. So far, it seems only three of SBF’s inner circle members have snitched on him: Caroline Ellison, Ryan Salame, and Gary Wang.
U.S. attorney Damian Williams said on Wednesday that the FTX investigation is still ongoing, and more announcements will be made in the near future. With Salame, Ellison, and Wang in the bag, it looks as though no one who committed misconduct at FTX will be left unexposed.