Robinhood Ex-Engineers Charged with Commodities and Wire Fraud
Two former engineers at Robinhood, Hefu Chai and Huaisong Xiang, have been charged by U.S. prosecutors with commodities and wire fraud.
The charges allege that the pair used confidential listing information to trade perpetual futures on Hyperliquid before public announcements of new listings on Robinhood Crypto.
According to prosecutors, both men were designated 'Coin Aware Individuals,' a group with access to a private Slack channel containing information about planned listings. They allegedly used this information to buy perpetual futures linked to crypto tokens on Hyperliquid in advance of Robinhood Crypto's public announcements that the underlying assets would be listed.
The pair earned more than $50,000 each between 2025 and 2026 through these trades, which prosecutors say constitute illegal misappropriation. If convicted, they could face up to 10 years in prison for commodities fraud and up to 20 years for wire fraud.