SEATTLE — A Mercer Island man was sentenced to two years in prison for four counts of wire fraud after prosecutors said he took and misused over $35 million from his former employer.
42-year-old Nevin Shetty was found guilty last November following a nine-day jury trial. On March 5, 2026, Shetty was sentenced to two years in prison, with three years of subsequent supervised release.
In asking for a nine-year prison sentence, Assistant U.S. Attorney Philip Kopczynski wrote to the court, “This was a calculated scheme motivated by greed and meticulously carried out over many months. 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.”
Shetty was hired as the CFO of a private software company in March 2021. While the company was raising capital, Shetty secretly moved approximately $35 million in company funds to a cryptocurrency platform he controlled as a side business, according to the Department of Justice (DOJ).
The side business, called HighTower Treasury, had no other outside customers. In April 2022, after he was told he could not continue as CFO due to concerns about his performance, Shetty secretly used wire transfers to move the $35,000,100 from his employer’s account to an account for HighTower Treasury.
Through HighTower, Shetty placed the money in a realm of cryptocurrency sometimes referred to as decentralized finance or “DeFi.” In the first month alone, Shetty’s scheme earned roughly $133,000 of profit, the DOJ says. However, the cryptocurrency investments soon began declining, and by May 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 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.”
Shetty was ordered to pay $35,000,100 and will be on supervised release for three years after prison, with the judge imposing a special condition that he not serve as an officer or director of a company without prior permission from the probation office.
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