The US Department of Justice on Tuesday charged two former Robinhood engineers with commodities fraud and wire fraud, alleging they used confidential information about upcoming cryptocurrency listings to profit from perpetual futures trades on Hyperliquid.
Hefu Chai, who worked at Robinhood from approximately 2021 until May 2026 as a technical lead overseeing new digital-asset listings, and Huaisong "Jerry" Xiang, a software engineer employed from around 2024 until September 2026, opened long perpetual positions on tokens ahead of their debut on Robinhood Crypto, the DOJ said. Prosecutors allege each made more than $50,000 in profits from the trades between 2025 and 2026.
Both employees were designated "Coin Aware Individuals" and granted access to a private company Slack channel that contained planned listing dates, according to the complaints. The company required members of the group to refrain from trading on Robinhood or any other platform for 24 hours before or after a listing or delisting announcement, prosecutors noted.
The DOJ alleged Chai traded perpetuals ahead of at least 10 listing announcements involving tokens including Cat in a dogs world (MEW), Moo Deng (MOODENG), Aster (ASTER), Plasma (XPL), Hyperliquid (HYPE), Ethena (ENA) and Aerodrome Finance (AERO). Xiang first traded Popcat (POPCAT) perpetuals in March 2025 and subsequently traded ahead of at least 10 other listing announcements, prosecutors said.
US Attorney Jamie McDonald said corporate insiders cannot evade securities and commodities laws by trading misappropriated information through perpetual futures, tokenized securities or similar instruments.
The charges parallel the 2023 insider-trading case against a former Coinbase employee who traded newly listed tokens directly, but extend the alleged misconduct into decentralized derivative markets.
Each defendant faces one count of violating the Commodity Exchange Act, carrying a maximum sentence of 10 years, and one count of wire fraud, carrying a maximum of 20 years. The allegations remain accusations, and both defendants are presumed innocent unless convicted.
Cointelegraph contacted Robinhood for comment but did not receive a response by the time of publication.
