The US Attorney's Office will no longer reopen the OpenSea insider trading case, reaching a deferred prosecution agreement with former executive Chastain

BlockBeats News, January 23rd, according to Cointelegraph, the U.S. Department of Justice will no longer re-examine the insider trading case against Nathaniel Chastain, former manager of the non-fungible token (NFT) platform OpenSea. The Manhattan federal court received a prosecution notice on Wednesday indicating that a deferred prosecution agreement had been reached with Chastain and the case would be dismissed in a month.

Previously, Chastain was convicted in 2023 of wire fraud and money laundering for using his position to purchase NFTs about to be featured on the OpenSea front page, selling them at a profit after the price increased. However, the federal appeals court overturned the ruling in July of this year, stating that the jury had received incorrect instructions and that NFT front page data lacked commercial value and did not meet the property definition under federal wire fraud law.

Manhattan U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton stated that considering Chastain had already served three months in prison and agreed not to contest the forfeiture of 15.98 ETH worth $47,330, the decision was made not to re-examine the case.