Onchain, in court: What happened in crypto legal news this week

Former Alameda Research and FTX executives receive 5-year trading bans

On Tuesday, the US District Court for the Southern District of New York (SDNY) entered consent orders related to a 2022 enforcement action against former Alameda Research CEO Caroline Ellison and crypto exchange FTX co-founder Zixiao “Gary” Wang.

The orders imposed by the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) required that Ellison and Wang receive a five-year trading ban related to their roles in the crypto exchange’s collapse. The CFTC also ordered that the Alameda CEO receive a 10-year registration ban, while Wang received an eight-year registration ban.

According to CFTC enforcement director David Miller, the orders reflected Wang’s and Ellison’s “material assistance in the Commission’s FTX-related investigations.” The civil case is separate from criminal cases involving the misuse of customer funds at FTX, in which Ellison was sentenced to two years in prison and Wang received time served.

US prosecutors file opposition to Polymarket trader over $400,000 Maduro bet

On Wednesday, lawyers representing the US government in SDNY filed their opposition to a motion to dismiss from Gannon Ken Van Dyke, a US soldier who allegedly made more than $400,000 using event contracts on prediction market platform Polymarket using nonpublic information. Van Dyke was tied to the military operation that removed Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in January.