Robinhood Engineers Charged with Misusing Confidential Crypto Listing Info for Personal Gain
The U.S. Department of Justice has charged two former Robinhood engineers, Hefu Chai and Huaisong Xiang, with commodities fraud and wire fraud over their alleged misuse of confidential company information to profit from cryptocurrency trades.
According to prosecutors, the pair used a private Slack channel to gain access to planned listing dates for new tokens, then traded ahead of public announcements on Hyperliquid, a decentralized perpetual futures platform. The alleged scheme generated over $1.13 million in combined profits, with each defendant accused of earning more than $50,000.
The charges stem from the pair's work on Robinhood's crypto listing process before leaving the company this year. Chai worked as a technical lead responsible for new digital asset listings, while Xiang served as a software engineer on the crypto team.