# Nishad Singh **Nishad Singh** was director of engineering at [[FTX]] and one of the small [[Effective Altruism]]-aligned inner circle living in the Nassau penthouse with [[Sam Bankman-Fried]], [[Caroline Ellison]], and [[Gary Wang]]. He wrote code that exempted Alameda Research from the exchange's automatic liquidation engine — the technical mechanism that made the fraud possible. He pleaded guilty in **February 2023** and became a **cooperating witness**, testifying at Bankman-Fried's October 2023 trial. His testimony was the clearest courtroom account of the **straw-donor machine**: Singh was recorded as the source of millions of dollars in donations to Democratic candidates and committees while the money originated with FTX, and he testified that Bankman-Fried directed political spending even after the roughly $13 billion hole in customer funds was known internally. The mirror-image Republican stream ran through [[Ryan Salame]]. See [[Crypto-Political Machine]]. On **October 30, 2024**, Judge Lewis Kaplan sentenced Singh to **no prison time** — time served plus three years of supervised release — citing his early and substantial cooperation. He is the FTX insider whose outcome most sharply illustrates the value of being first through the cooperation door. ## Cross-references - Employer and scandal: [[FTX]], [[FTX Collapse]] - Inner circle: [[Sam Bankman-Fried]], [[Caroline Ellison]], [[Gary Wang]], [[Ryan Salame]] - Ideological frame: [[Effective Altruism]], [[TESCREAL]] - Mechanism: [[Crypto-Political Machine]], [[Elite Impunity]] - Chronology: [[Campaign Finance Timeline]], [[Sam Bankman-Fried Collapse Timeline]] > [!note] Stub > Expand: the liquidation-exemption code change in detail, the full donation ledger, the forfeiture terms, and his trial testimony verbatim.