He told his colleagues only after the money was gone. Nevin Shetty, the former chief financial officer of a Seattle-based tech startup, was sentenced Thursday to two years in federal prison after secretly transferring $35 million in company funds into a cryptocurrency platform he ran on the side — then watching nearly all of it disappear in a matter of months.
A Scheme That Ran In Secret
Shetty made the transfers in 2022 without the knowledge of a single executive or board member at his employer, according to the US Justice Department.
He moved the funds into a platform called HighTower Treasury, which he controlled, and used the money to pour into high-yield DeFi lending protocols promising annual returns of 20% or more.
In the first month, he cleared $133,000. Then the Terra ecosystem collapsed, and the broader crypto market followed it down…