Three crypto executives—Gleb Gora, Manu Singh, and Vasu Sharma—were arrested in Singapore and extradited to the United States to face fraud charges. They are part of a wider group of ten executives and staff from four cryptocurrency financial services firms charged in the United States over market manipulation allegations. The indictments name four firms—Gotbit, Vortex, Antier, and Contrarian—and allege they conspired to inflate the trading volume and price of cryptocurrencies while profiting from inflated sales to unwitting investors.
The defendants allegedly engaged in “wash trading” to create the illusion of active trading, a practice defined as when a trader or group acts as both buyer and seller in the same transactions. The US Department of State said the arrests and extraditions were secured with valuable assistance from the FBI’s Law Enforcement Attache’s Office in Singapore and the DOJ’s Office of International Affairs, working with Singapore Police Force and Attorney-General’s Chambers. The operation stemmed from an undercover FBI and IRS Criminal Investigation probe into illicit wash trading in the cryptocurrency industry, during which the FBI created several cryptocurrency tokens as part of the investigation.
Over US$1 million (S$1.28 million) in cryptocurrency has been seized to date. And two defendants have already pleaded guilty and been sentenced in Oakland. The three arrested individuals—Gora, Singh, and Sharma—were identified by the US Department of State as Russian and Indian nationals, with Singh serving as chief executive of Contrarian and Sharma as a business development associate at Contrarian’s partner firm Antier Solutions. They were arrested on October 2, 2025, and appeared in court in Oakland, California, after their extradition from Singapore.
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