One of the three Co-founders of BitMEX, Benjamin Delo, has surrendered to the U.S. authorities. It is for the criminal charges introduced against him to breach the country’s Banking Secrecy Act. Benjamin Delo, a British citizen, was condemned on charges of disrupting U.S. anti-money laundering laws. Delo is an Oxford-educated computer scientist who built high-frequency trading systems for JPMorgan Chase & Co. He established BitMEX with Samael Reed and Arthur Hayes in 2014.
Delo’s surrender was a result of an agreement negotiated with U.S authorities in February. The negotiation was in association with the Federal Bureau of Investigation and U.S. Custom and Border Patrol. Therefore, Delo traveled from the U.K. to New York City, where he was captured in a remote court proceeding before U.S. Magistrate Judge Sarah L. Cave on Monday, March 15. However, Delo pleaded not guilty to failing to implement AML programs at BitMEX and plot to perform the Bank Secrecy Act violations. He was freed on a $20 million bail bond and permitted to retire to the U.K. to await trial.
Two BitMEX Executives yet to surrender
Furthermore, Delo is the second BitMEX executive to be indicted on such charges. In October last year, the officials arrested co-founder and CTO Samuel Reed in Massachusetts. It took place after the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ), and Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) pushed charges against BitMEX for violating AML and KYC regulations and operating an unregistered trading platform. However, Reed was freed on a bail bond of $20 million.
Two BitMEX executives are still at large. BitMEX CEO Arthur Hayes has been negotiating his surrender from Singapore, where he lived, since the indictment in October. In a February trial, federal prosecutors stated that Hayes was in Singapore and has considered surrendering in Hawaii in early April. Nevertheless, a fourth defendant, Gregory Dwyer, a senior employee at BitMEX and the head of business development at the exchange, is still large. He is supposed to be in Bermuda and is reportedly not meshing in negotiations with authorities attempting his extradition from the Caribbean country.
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