According to CoinDesk: Nate Chastain, the 33-year-old former head of product at NFT platform OpenSea, has been sentenced to three months in prison for making insider trades worth tens of thousands of dollars. Convicted of fraud and money laundering in federal court in New York in May, Chastain's case was described as the first prominent NFT insider trading case by prosecutors. He made over $50,000 by buying and selling at least 45 NFTs he knew would be featured on OpenSea's homepage, using various anonymous wallets and OpenSea accounts to conceal his purchases, as stated by the U.S. Justice Department.
Inner City Press reported the sentencing on Tuesday. Chastain's sentence is significantly shorter than the approximately two-year sentence prosecutors had called for, citing a previous insider trading case at Coinbase. The judge in the case attributed the lenient sentence to Chastain's modest earnings from the trades. At the time of the crime, the NFT market had reached its peak, growing to around $40 billion.
U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said in a statement on Monday that the sentence should serve as a warning to other corporate insiders that insider trading in any marketplace will not be tolerated.
