US Arrests Former Employee of Opensea NFT Marketplace in 'First-Ever Digital Asset Insider Trading Scheme'
The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has indicted an employee of non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace Opensea in what the department called the “first-ever digital asset insider trading scheme.”
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DOJ Indicts Former Opensea Product Manager
The DOJ announced Wednesday the unsealing of an indictment charging Nathaniel Chastain, a former product manager at Ozone Networks Inc. (aka Opensea), in its “first-ever digital asset insider trading scheme.” Chastain was arrested Wednesday morning in New York.
The Justice Department explained that from June to September 2021, the defendant allegedly used Opensea’s confidential information about what NFTs were going to be featured on its homepage “to secretly purchase dozens of NFTs shortly before they were featured.” The DOJ added:
“After those NFTs were featured on Opensea, Chastain sold them at profits of two- to five-times his initial purchase price_”_.
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