The U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington issued a final judgment against Sameer Ramani, who was previously accused of engaging in insider trading through a trading scheme ahead of multiple announcements about at least nine crypto asset securities to be made available for trading on the Coinbase platform.
The SEC complaint alleged that Ramani received advice from his friend, Ishan Wahi, who was then a product manager at Coinbase and helped coordinate the platform’s public listing announcements. These announcements included which crypto assets would be available for trading.
According to the complaint, Coinbase treated that information as confidential and warned its employees not to trade on that information or give it away from others. The complaint alleges that, from at least June 2021 through April 2022, in violation of his duties, Ishan repeatedly provided information about the timing and content of upcoming listing announcements to Ramani and Nikhil Wahi, Ishan’s brother.
Before these announcements, which usually lead to a spike in asset prices, Ramani and Nikhil Wahi allegedly bought at least 25 crypto assets, at least nine of which were securities, and then sold them, usually shortly after the announcements for profit.
The judgment, which was entered in default, allowed Ramani to violate the anti-fraud provisions of Section 10(b) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and Rule 10b-5 thereunder. The judgment ordered Ramani to pay $817,602 and a civil penalty of $1,635,204.
The court had previously issued final judgments against Ishan and Nikhil Wahi, so the final judgment against Ramani concludes the dispute in this matter.