The former finance vice president of Delphi Digital has been sentenced to four years in jail after admitting to embezzling nearly $4.5 million from the crypto research firm.

Connecticut District Court Judge Michael P. Shea on Dec. 17 sentenced Dylan Meissner to 48 months in jail followed by two years supervised release and ordered him to pay back over $4.6 million for the funds he stole plus a loan he hadn’t repaid, the Justice Department said.

The Justice Department didn’t name Meissner’s previous employer by name — only referring to it in court as “Company A” and a “cryptocurrency research firm” — but he worked at Delphi Digital at the time of his crimes.

Meissner’s lawyer also repeatedly mentioned “Delphi” was the company in a sentencing memo filed earlier this month.

An excerpt of Meissner’s sentencing memo notes “Delphi” as the company harmed. Source: CourtListener

As Delphi’s vice president of finance between October 2021 and November 2022, Meissner had access to the company’s crypto wallets and bank accounts.

In January 2022, Delphi gave him a 50 Ether (ETH) loan worth around $170,000 at the time, which he said was to avoid losses in personal crypto investments he made.

He didn’t repay the loan, and from when he got it until he was fired in November 2022, Meissner stole around $4.46 million from Delphi and made fake financial entries on its books to cover up his embezzlement.

As part of a plea deal, Meissner pleaded guilty to wire fraud in July and was released on a $100,000 bond. The Justice Department said he’s required to report to prison on Feb. 21, 2025, and waived his right to an appeal.

Meissner’s sentence landed below the lower-end suggestion from his lawyer, who said he should serve 51 to 63 months, or 4 to 5 years plus 3 months. In a Dec. 10 sentencing memo, prosecutors said he should serve 78 to 97 months — 6.5 to 8 years.

Meissner’s sentencing memo asked the judge to account for his “history with substance abuse,” his “effort to continue maintaining his sobriety,” and his admission to “himself and to Delphi that he was a drug addict who had betrayed the company through his large-scale embezzlement.”

It adds he helped Delphi by making a spreadsheet of “the damage he had caused the company.”

Prosecutors, however, said in their memo that Meissner’s crimes weren’t “a momentary lapse in judgment, but [a] sustained, multi-faceted scheme to steal millions of dollars from an employer that entrusted the defendant with its finances.”

They said he told the Probation Office that he “took the money with the intention of returning it eventually,” which prosecutors argued “undermines the suggestion that the defendant’s actions were borne of a compulsion to gamble or a drug-induced haze.”

“It suggests that the defendant was operating rationally, if wrongfully—he intended to use company money to recoup his personal losses and make money for himself, and then give the company back what he took once the market went up,” they added.

Cointelegraph reached out to Meissner’s lawyers for comment. 

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