Robinhood Engineers Charged with Trading on Confidential Info

Two former engineers at Robinhood Markets, Hefu Chai and Huaisong Xiang (also known as Jerry Xiang), have been charged with commodities fraud and wire fraud. The charges stem from an alleged scheme to misappropriate confidential business information from Robinhood Markets to trade perpetual futures on Hyperliquid.

Between 2025 and 2026, the two engineers repeatedly bought perpetual futures tied to specific cryptocurrency tokens on Hyperliquid ahead of Robinhood's public listing announcements. They allegedly possessed material nonpublic information about the upcoming listing and traded on it in breach of their confidentiality duties to Robinhood.

Each alleged trade followed the same pattern: buy before the announcement, profit when the listing became public. Significantly, Chai and Xiang each reportedly profited more than $50,000 from their illicit trading activity.