Former CFO sentenced to two years in prison for $35 million theft from start-up tech firm
Used the money to buy cryptocurrency to prop up his side-business
Seattle / Thursday, March 5, 2026 – A Mercer Island, Washington, man was sentenced today in U.S. District Court in Seattle to two years in prison for four counts of wire fraud for taking and misusing some $35 million from his former employer, announced First Assistant U.S. Attorney Charles Neil Floyd. Nevin Shetty, 42, was found guilty on November 7, 2025, following a nine-day jury trial. At the sentencing hearing Judge Tana Lin told Shetty, “The loss had significant and severe effects on the company. Your actions threw into complete turmoil the lives of those 60 people (who were laid off) …. You almost put the company out of business…. You were playing with money that wasn’t yours.”
“Mr. Shetty brazenly schemed to line his own pockets with his employer’s money. Through years of pretrial litigation and then at trial, he steadfastly deflected blame and even went so far as to claim that his fraud was somehow meant to help his former company,” said First Assistant U.S. Attorney Neil Floyd. “His lies did not fool the jury.”
According to records in the case, Shetty was hired as the CFO of a private software company in March 2021. The company was raising capital for its work in multiple rounds of funding. The company, with Shetty, drafted a policy governing how the money raised should be kept safe while the company worked to grow its business. The company adopted an investment policy statement that called for company cash to be invested only in money market accounts or other conservative investments. The company’s overriding objective was to preserve its capital for use in operating and growing the business.
Even though Shetty helped draft the policy and disseminate it to the board of directors for approval, he secretly moved approximately $35 million in company funds to a cryptocurrency platform he controlled as a side business. Shetty created that side business, called HighTower Treasury, in early 2022. It had no other outside customers. In April 2022, shortly after he was told he could not continue as CFO at his employer due to concerns about his performance, Shetty secretly transferred the funds out of his employer’s account.
Between April 1 and 12, 2022, using wire transfers he ordered from a Chase bank branch near his home, Shetty moved $35,000,100 of his employer’s money to an account for HighTower Treasury. No other executives or board members at the company knew of these transfers. Shetty, through HighTower, then placed the money in a realm of cryptocurrency sometimes referred to as decentralized finance or “DeFi.” Shetty chose high-yield DeFi lending protocols that promised to generate returns of 20% or more. Shetty’s idea was that HighTower would pay Shetty’s company a comparatively small, fixed amount and keep the remainder of the returns for itself. As an owner of HighTower, Shetty stood to personally share in those profits, which could have been substantial. In the first month alone, Shetty’s scheme earned roughly $133,000 of profit for himself and his HighTower business partner.
However, the cryptocurrency investments that Shetty made with the stolen funds soon began declining and by May 13, 2022, the value of the investments was nearly zero. After the $35 million was essentially gone, Shetty told two of his fellow executives what he had done. He was immediately fired.
In asking for a nine-year prison sentence, Assistant U.S. Attorney Philip Kopczynski wrote to the court, “Shetty’s serious crime deserves stern punishment. This was a calculated scheme motivated by greed and meticulously carried out over many months. Shetty created a web of lies. He lied to people up and down the chain of command at [his employer], people at outside institutions like Stifel and Chase, and to his HighTower business partner…. Adapting to the massive loss from Shetty’s fraud required [his former employer]to lay off 60 people. Those are 60 people whose lives and careers were irrevocably damaged by Shetty’s greed.”
“In less than one month, Mr. Shetty stole $35 million from his employer that he knew was meant to be kept in conservative investments to help grow the company,” said Jonathan Dean, Assistant Special Agent in Charge of the FBI Seattle field office. “Instead, he lost almost of all it through risky cryptocurrency investments. As the company’s CFO, Mr. Shetty was not only part of the investment planning but also had the access and trust to move the money. I commend the FBI and the U.S. Attorney’s Office who worked tirelessly on a difficult case to bring this embezzler to justice.”
Shetty was ordered to pay $35,000,100 and will be on supervised release for three years after prison. Judge Lin imposed a special condition that he not serve as an officer or director of a company without prior permission from the probation office.
The case is being prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorneys Philip Kopczynski and Grace Zoller.
Contact
Press contact for the U.S. Attorney’s Office is Communications Director Emily Langlie at (206) 553-4110 or Emily.Langlie@usdoj.gov.
Source: U.S. Attorney's Office, Western District of Washington
