Jurors in Manhattan federal court on Wednesday found that a former employee of the NFT exchange OpenSea was guilty of wire fraud and money laundering in a historic case described by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York as the first-ever prosecution in a “digital asset insider trading scheme.”

As part of his job at OpenSea, defendant Nathaniel Chastain was tasked with choosing NFTs to be featured on the marketplace website, a prime position that often led them to increase in value. Chastain acknowledged that he bought some of those NFTs shortly before they were featured and later sold them for a profit, which prosecutors described as an improper use of inside company information.

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