The Art of the StealA project of the Save America Movement
Donate

★ Government Action

Trump pardons BitMEX co-founders for Bank Secrecy Act violations

Easing Up on CryptoThe Pardon List

Filed March 2025

★ The Brief

What happened

Trump issued full pardons on March 27, 2025 to BitMEX's three founders, Arthur Hayes, Benjamin Delo, and Samuel Reed, and a former executive, clearing their guilty pleas for failing to run anti-money-laundering controls at the crypto exchange.

Who enabled it

Donald Trump

Who benefits

AHArthur HayesBenjamin DeloGDGregory DwyerSRSamuel Reed

Deal or steal?

The pardons fit a wave of crypto-world clemency in Trump's first months back: he cleared Silk Road's Ross Ulbricht on his first day and later pardoned Binance founder Changpeng Zhao, convicted under the same anti-money-laundering law.

★ Cast your vote

President Trump issued full pardons on March 27, 2025 to Arthur Hayes, Benjamin Delo, Samuel Reed — the three co-founders of the BitMEX cryptocurrency exchange — and to former business development chief Gregory Dwyer. All four had previously pled guilty to one count each of violating the Bank Secrecy Act for failing to maintain anti-money laundering and know-your-customer programs. The founders had been sentenced to varying terms of probation and ordered collectively to pay $30 million in civil fines related to a CFTC lawsuit. Dwyer had been sentenced to 12 months of probation and agreed to pay $150,000 in fines. BitMEX itself had been separately fined $100 million in December 2024 for the same Bank Secrecy Act violations. Prosecutors had accused the executives of operating BitMEX as a 'money laundering platform' and characterized its purported withdrawal from the U.S. market as 'a sham.'

Sources

Further reading