Robinhood Engineers Charged with Crypto Trading Scandal

Two software engineers at Robinhood Markets Inc., Hefu Chai and Huaisong (Jerry) Xiang, have been charged by U.S. authorities with wire fraud and commodities fraud.

The allegations claim that between March 2025 and February 2026, the engineers used inside information about forthcoming crypto tokens on Robinhood's trading platform to trade futures on Hyperliquid.

As engineers at the brokerage firm, Chai and Xiang had access to non-public information about when the firm would enable trading in certain tokens on its crypto trading platform. They allegedly used this information to buy perpetual futures linked to those tokens ahead of Robinhood's announcements about the planned listing of the tokens.