CFTC consent orders add five-year trading bans for Ellison and Wang
A US federal court in the Southern District of New York entered consent orders on Tuesday tied to a 2022 CFTC enforcement action against former Alameda Research CEO Caroline Ellison and FTX co-founder Zixiao “Gary” Wang.
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission said both Ellison and Wang must serve five-year trading bans over their roles in the collapse of the crypto exchange. Ellison also received a 10-year registration ban, while Wang was hit with an eight-year registration ban.
According to CFTC enforcement director David Miller, the orders reflected Ellison’s and Wang’s “material assistance in the Commission’s FTX-related investigations.”
The civil matter is separate from the criminal cases tied to the misuse of customer funds at FTX. Ellison was sentenced to two years in prison, while Wang received time served.
US prosecutors push back on Polymarket dismissal motion
On Wednesday, lawyers for the US government filed their opposition in SDNY to a motion to dismiss brought by Gannon Ken Van Dyke, a US soldier accused of making more than $400,000 on Polymarket using nonpublic information.
Prosecutors said Van Dyke was linked to the military operation that removed Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in January.
Van Dyke’s July 31 motion argued that the Commodity Exchange Act, which sits at the center of three charges against him, was “ambiguous” in treating event contracts as “swaps” under CFTC oversight.
In Wednesday’s filing, the government said Van Dyke “advances hypotheticals, edge cases, and ongoing litigation over state gaming laws” that do not need to be resolved to move the case forward.
Sean Buckley, a deputy US attorney in SDNY, said Van Dyke was asking the court to make a factual determination at the motion-to-dismiss stage, which would be inappropriate. He said the argument rests on “speculative assertions about facts, based on improper inferences from the Indictment and incorrect conclusions about the nature of the charge,” in an effort to show the facts do not amount to “property.”
As of Friday, no ruling had been posted publicly on the motion.
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