“With this plea, this Office has now obtained criminal convictions against all three founders, as well as a high-ranking employee at BitMEX, for willful violations of anti-money laundering laws, US Attorney Damian Williams said.
The Department of Justice said in a press statement that Dwyer was a key player in BitMEX’s breaches of the law which included serving customers in the US despite it not being legal to sell its cryptocurrency betting products to US customers.
“Dwyer aided and abetted BitMEX’s failure to institute AML (anti-money laundering) or KYC (know your customer) programs despite closely following US regulatory developments that made clear the legal obligation to do so if BitMEX operated in the United States, which it did.
Dwyer worked as a senior executive within the group from 2015, running its Manhattan office and operating as head of business development. In 2019, he moved to work at BitMEX’s offices in Bermuda.Credit:iStock
“Dwyer knew that BitMEX’s purported withdrawal from the US market after in or about September 2015 was a sham, and that purported “controls” BitMEX put in place to prevent US trading were an ineffective facade that did not, in fact, prevent users from accessing or trading on BitMEX from the United States.”
Under the terms of his plea agreement, Dwyer agreed to separately pay a $US150,000 ($219,600) criminal fine, which the US Department of Justice said was representative of the pecuniary gain he derived from the offence.
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A judge will decide Dwyer’s full sentence in the coming months, US authorities said. BitMEX was contacted for comment.
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