Australian bitcoin mogul Greg Dwyer has been sentenced to one year probation after being found guilty of violating US banking laws while he was a senior executive at troubled cryptocurrency exchange BitMEX, as his advisers slammed authorities for their heavy-handed approach to his charges.
Dwyer will be allowed to serve his probation outside of the United States given that his residence is currently in Bermuda. He was also fined $US150,000 as part of his sentence to charges brought against him by the US Department of Justice.
Australian Greg Dwyer has been sentenced in the US. Credit:Business Insider
The Sydney University and St Ignatius graduate was sentenced recently after pleading guilty to the charge after his co-accused – the founders of BitMEX – had entered guilty pleas for similar charges.
Dwyer was charged alongside the three co-founders of BitMEX in late 2020 with willfully breaching American banking laws by allowing customers to sign up to the cryptocurrency betting group using fake passports and other incorrect information to bypass anti-money laundering laws.
US regulators that brought the action against BitMEX and its senior most executives have described the group as a “platform for money laundering” that operated in “the shadows of the financial markets”.
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Dwyer was the first employee at BitMEX. The group remains one of the world’s largest bitcoin and cryptocurrency-related exchanges. BitMEX, which processed more than $US950 billion in transactions in 2020, has been conservatively valued at $US3 billion.
BitMEX’s chief executive and co-founder Arthur Hayes remains a high profile player in the cryptocurrency scene despite being sentenced to six months of house arrest after being charged alongside Dwyer and the group’s two other founders Ben Delo and Sam Reed.
Before his arrest, Dwyer was also well known within the cryptocurrency scene, giving interviews to Business Insider and appearing at a bitcoin conference in Manhattan in 2019.
