MyTrade Head First to Plead Guilty Among Group of Firms Accused of Gaming Markets

The U.S. Department of Justice said it secured a guilty plea from the operator of crypto “market maker” MyTrade, which was one target in a wide-ranging sting that brought manipulation charges to multiple firms and individuals earlier this month.

Liu Zhou, 39, said to be from China and Canada, will be sentenced early next year in federal court for “the wash trading of client cryptocurrencies across multiple cryptocurrency exchanges,” according to the DOJ. Wash trading refers to the artificial driving up of asset prices by suggesting a fake level of transaction interest.

According to federal charging documents unsealed a few weeks ago, Gotbit, CLS Global and ZM Quant were also among those that allegedly wash traded various tokens to make it seem they had more legitimate activity than they actually did, selling some of these tokens at “artificially inflated prices” to others.

Read More: It Takes a Fake Token to Catch a Volume FakerThe Justice Department said Zhou’s operation, commonly known as MyTrade MM, told people it “does self-trades — a buy and a sell in the same second,” and that its volume bot could do “pump and dumps.” Zhou also allegedly said his firm’s intent was to locate “other buyers from the community, people you don’t know about or don’t care about,” because the buyers have to be made to lose money to turn a profit on the tokens.

Meanwhile, another of the firms, CLS Global, said it’s reached out to U.S. authorities to cooperate.

“We recognize that there may be areas where we can improve our processes, and we are open to constructive dialogue with regulatory authorities,” CEO Filipp Veselov said in a statement that noted his company tries to block engagement with “U.S. clients, entities, or users.”