DOJ Says Two Robinhood Engineers Used Perpetual Futures to Trade Ahead of Its Crypto Listings

Federal prosecutors have accused two engineers at Robinhood of using their inside view of the company’s crypto listings to trade ahead of the rest of the market.

The US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York on Tuesday unsealed criminal complaints against two engineers at Robinhood Markets, Hefu Chai and Huaisong Xiang, charging each with wire fraud and commodities fraud. Both had access to nonpublic information about whether and when the brokerage’s crypto arm, Robinhood Crypto, would add new tokens, according to the complaints.

Between 2025 and 2026, prosecutors say, the pair repeatedly bought perpetual futures tied to specific tokens on Hyperliquid, a decentralized derivatives exchange, just before Robinhood publicly announced it would list those tokens. Each defendant made more than $50,000 from the trades, the government alleges.

Trading on advance knowledge of an exchange listing is not a new charge. In 2022, the Justice Department brought what it called the first crypto insider-trading case against former Coinbase manager Ishan Wahi, who tipped his brother and a friend to coming listings and later pleaded guilty to wire fraud conspiracy.

The instrument is what sets this case apart. Rather than buying the tokens themselves, Chai and Xiang are accused of betting on their prices through perpetual futures, contracts that track an asset without ever expiring. Prosecutors reached for the Commodity Exchange Act to charge those derivatives trades, part of a broader push to treat crypto perpetuals as futures under US law.

“Today’s charges make clear that corporate insiders cannot evade the securities and commodities laws by trading based on misappropriated information in derivatives like perpetual futures, tokenized securities, or other similar financial instruments,” US Attorney Jamie McDonald said in the announcement.

Chai, 36, and Xiang, 30, each face one count under the Commodity Exchange Act, which carries up to 10 years in prison, and one count of wire fraud, which carries up to 20 years, prosecutors said. Robinhood cooperated with the investigation, according to the US Attorney’s office. The charges are allegations, and both men are presumed innocent.

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