Ex-Robinhood engineers charged over Hyperliquid trades — SkimNews
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- DOJ charged Hefu Chai and Huaisong "Jerry" Xiang with commodities fraud and wire fraud for allegedly trading Hyperliquid perpetuals ahead of Robinhood crypto listings, with each allegedly profiting more than $50,000 between 2025 and 2026.
- Chai and Xiang were designated Robinhood "Coin Aware Individuals" with access to a private Slack channel containing planned listing dates, per the DOJ complaints.
- Robinhood's policy barred members of that group from trading on any platform 24 hours before or after a listing or delisting announcement — a rule prosecutors say both engineers violated.
- Chai allegedly traded perpetuals ahead of at least 10 announcements involving MEW, MOODENG, ASTER, XPL, HYPE, ENA and AERO; Xiang allegedly started with POPCAT in March 2025 before at least 10 more listings.
- Each defendant faces up to 10 years in prison for the Commodity Exchange Act count and up to 20 years for wire fraud.
- US Attorney Jamie McDonald said corporate insiders cannot evade securities and commodities laws by trading misappropriated information through perpetual futures, tokenized securities or similar instruments, drawing an explicit parallel to the 2023 Coinbase insider-trading case but extending it into decentralized derivatives markets.
Why it matters: The DOJ is extending insider-trading enforcement from spot crypto markets into decentralized derivatives, with McDonald stating that perpetuals and tokenized securities offer no legal shield for misappropriated information. Each engineer faces up to 10 years for the CEA count and 20 years for wire fraud, establishing real prison risk for DeFi-based insider schemes and raising the stakes for corporate information controls at crypto firms.
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