Becca Balint’s $1 million crypto benefactor pleads guilty to campaign finance fraud

Nishad Singh, a former executive at now-bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange FTX who bankrolled a $1 million advertising blitz to benefit U.S. Rep. Becca Balint’s primary bid, pleaded guilty Tuesday in federal court to multiple criminal charges, including campaign finance fraud.

Singh’s plea is the latest domino to fall in the saga of Sam Bankman-Fried, a former cryptocurrency underdog and political megadonor who is now accused by federal prosecutors of committing one of the biggest financial crimes in US history.

“I am incredibly sorry for my role in all of this,” Singh, 27, said during a court hearing, according to Reuters, adding that he had known in mid-2022 that Bankman-Fried’s hedge fund, Alameda Research, loaned FTX client funds without to tell the depositors.

The case against Bankman-Fried is gaining momentum. Singh is the third member of his inner circle to agree to cooperate with prosecutors in exchange for a plea deal. And in a superseding indictment filed last week in federal court, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York filed new charges against Bankman-Fried and outlined new details of an alleged scheme to illegally funnel investor funds to political campaigns through associates of to mask their source.

The former CEO of crypto exchange platform FTX did so, prosecutors wrote, explicitly to gain favor in Washington, DC, for his preferred regulatory agenda for the industry.

A donation cited in last week’s indictment appears to mirror the circumstances that led to a million-dollar influx of pro-Balint spending in Vermont’s 2022 Democratic congressional primary, though Balint is not named in the indictment and did not has been accused of trespassing.

Prosecutors allege that Bankman-Fried and associates devised a scheme to “contribute at least $1 million to a super PAC supporting a candidate running for a US congressional seat who appeared to be associated with pro-LGBTQ issues.”

According to prosecutors, a political consultant working for Bankman-Fried asked an unnamed associate of his to make the contribution, saying, “Generally, as the center left of our spending, you’re going to give to a lot of vigilante crap for transactions. purpose.”

Balint, who made history as the first openly LGBTQ+ person elected to Congress from Vermont, benefited in the final weeks of her hotly contested primary campaign from a million-dollar advertising blitz by the LGBTQ Victory Fund, a hybrid political action committee and super PAC. Singh bankrolled the expenses, although the timing of his donation allowed his involvement to remain unknown until after the primary.

Super PACs cannot legally coordinate with campaigns, and Balint’s campaign manager, Natalie Silver, reiterated, as she has many times before, that the campaign had “no contact with the LGBTQ Victory Fund federal independent expenditure PAC, and has no knowledge of LGBTQ Victory Fund’s interactions with their donors or their plans for their funds.”

But there are legal solutions to the ban on coordination, and Balint’s campaign appeared to be using one of those tactics early in the primary.

Campaigns and PACs across the country that benefited from the crypto mogul’s largesse have pledged to cooperate with prosecutors to return as much money as possible to defrauded investors. But with most of this summer’s election money already spent, it’s unclear whether campaigns and PACs that received money from Bankman-Fried and his associates will actually be able to repay what they received in full.

Close allies of Bankman-Fried, including Singh, gave at least $26,000 directly to Balint’s campaign, a VTDigger analysis found. Silver, who has repeatedly said the campaign has raised funds it now believes has ties back to Bankman-Fried pending guidance from the Justice Department, has never said how much it has set aside. She declined to answer a question about the case Tuesday.

Similarly, Albert Fujii, a spokesperson for the LGBTQ Victory Fund, wrote in an email Tuesday that the PAC had “set aside funds and will take appropriate action once we receive guidance from the government,” but offered no further details.

Singh’s contribution to the Victory Fund totaled $1.1 million; The PAC now has less than $200,000 in the bank, according to federal filings. Fujii did not respond to a follow-up question about how much the PAC had available to contribute to the victims of FTX’s collapse.