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mystlnewsonline · 11 months

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Former Coinbase Mgr. Agree to Settle Insider Trading Charges

Former Coinbase Manager and His Brother Agree to Settle Insider Trading Charges Relating to Crypto Asset Securities Washington, DC (STL.News) The Securities and Exchange Commission today announced that former Coinbase product manager Ishan Wahi and his brother, Nikhil Wahi, agreed to settle charges that they engaged in insider trading through a scheme to trade ahead of multiple announcements regarding at least nine crypto asset securities that would be made available for trading on the Coinbase platform. Ishan and Nikhil Wahi each agreed to be permanently enjoined from violating Section 10(b) of the Securities Exchange Act and Rule 10b-5 and to pay disgorgement of ill-gotten gains, plus prejudgment interest. As is often the case when a criminal court has already ordered defendants to forfeit their ill-gotten gains, the disgorgement and prejudgment interest in the SEC's case would be deemed satisfied by the orders of forfeiture of the Wahi brothers' assets in the criminal action, if approved by the court, and the SEC determined not to seek civil penalties in light of the Wahi brothers' prison sentences. The SEC's complaint, filed on July 21, 2022, in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington, alleged that, while employed at Coinbase, Ishan Wahi helped to coordinate the platform's public listing announcements that included what crypto assets would be made available for trading. According to the complaint, Coinbase treated such information as confidential and warned its employees not to trade on the basis of, or tip others with, that information. However, from at least June 2021 to April 2022, in breach of his duties, Ishan repeatedly tipped the timing and content of upcoming listing announcements to his brother, Nikhil Wahi, and his friend, Sameer Ramani. Ahead of those announcements, which usually resulted in an increase in the assets' prices, Nikhil Wahi and Ramani allegedly purchased at least 25 crypto assets, at least nine of which were securities, and then typically sold them shortly after the announcements for a profit. The Wahi brothers agreed, as part of the settlement, not to deny the SEC's allegations. "While the technologies at issue, in this case, for may be new, the conduct is not. We allege that Ishan and Nikhil Wahi, respectively, tipped and traded securities based on material nonpublic information, and that's insider trading, pure and simple," said Gurbir S. Grewal, Director of the SEC's Division of Enforcement. "The federal securities laws do not exempt crypto asset securities from the prohibition against insider trading, nor does the SEC. I am grateful to the SEC staff for successfully working to resolve this matter." Subject to court approval, Ishan and Nikhil Wahi consented to the entry of final judgments that permanently enjoin them from violating Section 10(b) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and Rule 10b-5 thereunder. In the criminal action, Ishan and Nikhil Wahi pled guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud. As a result, Ishan Wahi was sentenced to 24 months in prison and ordered to forfeit 10.97 ether and 9,440 Tether, and Nikhil was sentenced to 10 months in prison and ordered to forfeit $892,500. The SEC's investigation was conducted by Michael Brennan, Jennie B. Krasner, and Gregory Padgett, with assistance from Patrick McCluskey, Sejal Bhakta, and Donald Battle. The case was supervised by Paul Kim, Joseph Sansone, and Carolyn M. Welshhans. The litigation is led by Daniel Maher and Peter Lallas and supervised by Olivia Choe. The SEC appreciates the assistance of the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York and the FBI. SOURCE: Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Read the full article

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sci-fiworlds · 1 year

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A Sci-Fi Worlds Interview with Lance Parkin

Richard Thomas: Just want to start by saying thanks for giving me and the Sci-Fi Worlds readers the time to answer these questions. It's really appreciated, so thanks.

I first became a fan of Doctor Who after my dad bought me the VHS video release of Genesis of the Daleks when I was about five or six I think. After that I started watching the Doctor Who repeats on UK Gold. How did you first become a fan of the series and did you have a particular favourite adversary and/or story growing up?

Lance Parkin: I've been a fan longer than I remember. I vaguely remember the pterodactyl in Invasion of the Dinosaurs. The first story I've got vivid memories of is Pyramids of Mars. I've always been startlingly uncritical about Doctor Who. I love it all. 'My' Doctor Who is Tom, Lalla and K9, my favourite era is the Rebecca Levene Golden Age of the New Adventures, I adore the new series.

Richard Thomas: With the advent of blogs it's probably easier than ever for someone to begin writing. How did you start your writing career and how has it evolved over the years?

Lance Parkin: Virgin took new writers for their Doctor Who range, so I had a go and it worked. It's as simple as that. I wrote a couple of sample chapters for a Doctor Who novel called Just War and sent them in and I got commissioned and the book got published. Then they wanted a follow-up, then another, then another, then another, then Gareth Roberts invited me to become a storyline writer on Emmerdale and, three years after my first book, at the age of 27, I was a full-time writer. I sort of knew I was lucky, but I didn't really understand it at the time. After Emmerdale, I tried out for a couple of TV shows, but my heart wasn't in it. It's impossible, I think, for a British television viewer of good conscience to sit in the place they make Holby City without having Operation Valkyrie fantasies. So I reached a plateau with my writing a few years ago. I made a (fairly modest) living from being a writer, and that's pretty good going, but I was being hired by the same people who'd always hired me. Don't get me wrong: I'm extremely grateful to all the opportunities all those people have offered. About half the stuff I've done is Doctor Who related. I love Doctor Who, adore it, and the new series opened up new challenges, but I was aware I needed to step things up a little.

Last year, I finally sat down and decided to write an original novel and try to get an agent. I'd tried this a couple of times before, but nothing ever worked out. This time, I started on a book, an historical novel, that just wasn't clicking. So I started a short story called Fixing Jesus, a completely different thing, wrote that in a day or two and realised I'd written the first chapter of a novel. After that, things happened surreally fast. I wrote to a few agents, sending them the first few chapters of Fixing Jesus and most of them were very keen. For some reason, I'd done something that just clicked. One agent in particular, though, really understood the book, better than I did. That was Jessica Papin at Dystel and Goderich. I reworked the book pretty much from top to bottom (apart from that first chapter, which is just about word-for-word the way it was as a short story) and she agreed to represent me. So I'm up off my plateau. I have Fixing Jesus doing the rounds, and hopefully that'll be picked up by someone, I'm also just about to sign a really exciting, really big non-fiction deal I can't talk about yet. After that, I think it'll probably be back to the historical novel. In terms of blogs and being published … it's easier than ever to be published. It's harder than ever, I think, to be paid to write. The price of printing and distribution is so much lower than it used to be, and small presses can sell books over the internet. But that's always going to be to a limited audience. The major publishers are also making savings where they can, and that's often by not being as generous to writers, either upfront or for things like ebook rights. I don't believe in the death of print or that people are going to stop reading books. I do think that publishers have a challenge with all the free content on the internet – both the original stuff and the pirated stuff. I think it's most acute with non fiction. Those old-style episode guidebooks have just gone, now. People don't buy glossy 'making of a movie' books, they just watch the bonus DVD disc. Why buy a travel guide when you can just use your phone to find stuff? I rather grandly see myself as a novelist now, and I think novels are pretty safe. They're still great value for money as an entertainment product.

Richard Thomas: Aside from Doctor Who I see on your website you've also written about the second best science fiction series ever broadcast: Star Trek. What are some of your favourite episodes from the original series and why do you think two sci-fi shows from the 1960s (Doctor Who and Star Trek) continue to be so wildly popular even today?

Richard Thomas: If you were ever approached to write a Doctor Who/Star Trek crossover how do you think you would go about it?

Lance Parkin: I think it would be really difficult. It would be very easy to wallow in how wonderful it was to see the characters meet. Who needs a good story when you can just see Matt Smith arguing with Patrick Stewart or Chris Pine or whoever? What more do you need than Amy in one of those little classic Star Trek uniforms (complaining about how long the skirt is, presumably)? The thing with crossovers is that one of them always gets to be senior partner. It's very tricky to see a Who/Trek crossover that isn't basically Doctor Who taking the piss. Paul Magrs' book The Blue Angel is a great example, and a great book. Or, flip it around and the Doctor just becomes another guest star who shows up on the Enterprise then goes away again. My theory's always been that the Borg were a conscious attempt to do a Doctor Who in Star Trek – all the other alien races are all rival powers you can negotiate with. The Borg are basically just monsters out to exterminate, and that makes it very hard for the Federation to deal with them. At the same time … well, the Doctor would have sorted them out in ten minutes because he knows they're allergic to gold or something. I quite like the idea of the Enterprise stumbling across the Doctor doing something monumentally genocidal to the Daleks at the end of a story and Kirk or Picard stepping in to stop him, and the Daleks going 'thanks, we're just a race of peaceful explorers, I don't know what his problem is', and just telling the Federation what they want to hear while they line up their plan to capture the ship. Throw those two sixties versions of the future at each other – Kennedy era optimists v nuclear war mutants.

Richard Thomas: Your "A History" is easily the most complete chronology of the events of the Doctor Who universe ever printed. Where did the idea to do a complete chronology of the series and its various spin-offs (audio adventures, comic strips, novels etc.) come from and what were some of the biggest difficulties?

Lance Parkin: Well, it started out as a fan production that just covered the TV series. Virgin picked it up, and to be honest the reason the books are in that version is that it would have been far too short if they weren't. That was when there were something like seventy books, and a hundred and fifty TV stories. The last version, the Mad Norwegian one, has about a thousand stories in it and I was very grateful Lars Pearson helped me write that edition. The trick with the book is simple: Lars and I just list the facts. The Beast Below says that Earth in a thousand years is ravaged by solar flares, Cold Blood says the Silurians emerge then to live in harmony with humanity. Do those things match up? No. Are there ways of reconciling that? See the footnotes for some ideas. Their facts are more important than my theories.

Richard Thomas: You've written several novels including one of the very last past Doctor adventures, The Gallifrey Chronicles. Do you have a favourite novel you've written and who or what do you think has been your biggest influence as a author?

Lance Parkin: I'm never entirely satisfied, I am proud of just about everything of mine that's been published. There are bits in all of them I really love, bits in all of them I wish I could have another go at. If I was going to hand something of mine to someone, it would probably be Warlords of Utopia or The Eyeless. Possibly The Infinity Doctors. The first third of Father Time is pretty special, I think, the second third's not too shabby, the third third … has its moments. I think, technically, I've got better as a writer over the years. I also think that it's not just a matter of technical stuff. I read a lot. Influential? That's always a tricky one to answer, these things are rarely a straightforward cause-and-effect thing. In terms of the Who stuff, Terrance Dicks, Paul Cornell, Gareth Roberts and Kate Orman, all of whom are brilliant. There's a whole bunch of headline name authors who I love and must have been influenced by – Douglas Adams, Philip Pullman, Borges, Alan Moore, Grant Morrison, Michael Chabon, Iain Banks. I'm a big fan of Ken Macleod, Stephen Baxter and Nicholas Christopher.

Richard Thomas: If the BBC ever revived the past Doctor range do you have any ideas for new novels?

Lance Parkin: I always found the past Doctor books tricky, and the only two I did, Cold Fusion and The Infinity Doctors, cheated. I love my Doctor Who DVDs but I never really saw the point of trying to recreate that in book form, or the attraction of trying to reimagine it. There's a market for it, obviously, and there's obviously that nostalgic appeal. It's the same mentality as cosplaying, I think, the appeal exists in the skilled and forensic reconstruction of something pre-existing. I admire the people who can do it, to an extent, I just don't have that urge myself.

Richard Thomas: You've also written some excellent audio plays for Big Finish. Whose idea was it to do a Davros story that explored the characters genesis, and what do you think it is about the Davros character that resonates with audiences so strongly even today?

Lance Parkin: The Big Finish people always gave me pretty detailed briefs. Davros was part of a short series about notable villains, and Gary Russell told me to delve into Davros' origins. The thing I brought to the table was my belief that Davros was almost certainly a complete git well before his accident. I think fan wisdom before that was that the accident transformed him, hardened him. In my story it does to an extent, but it turns him into this mythical, immortal creature. Before that, he's a horrible human being, doing horrible things to the people around him.

The Daleks are Nazi toddlers, Davros is a sort of Nanny Hitler. The odd thing is that we never really see him in command of the Daleks, not in that Ming the Merciless, Palpatine kind of enthroned way. He skulks in a basement in most of them. I'm not sure what resonates, to be honest. He's visually very distinctive, obviously. I think part of it is that he's constantly plotting against the Daleks, and they're plotting against him.

Richard Thomas: The second edition of "A History" doesn't cover the most recent appearance of Davros in Journey's End, any thoughts on why the Davros we see looks like the Genesis era Davros (plus robotic arm) and not the Emperor Dalek seen in Remembrance of the Daleks? (Other than that Davros looked better.)

Lance Parkin: Well, the robotic arm is obviously the replacement for the one he loses in Revelation of the Daleks, so there's a nod to continuity there. I think the idea of Remembrance is that he's basically just the head in that Emperor casing, everything else has gone, but there's certainly room for the rest of him in there. So I don't see a huge problem. The Time Lords resurrected the Master, so it's only natural the Daleks would come for Davros (again).

Richard Thomas: Thanks Lance, hope we can do this again sometime. Feel free to tell readers where they can find your website and maybe contact you.

Lance Parkin: I've taken the plunge and joined Facebook, so people should feel free to get in touch with me there. I'm also building a website at https://lanceparkin.wordpress.com/

RAED RICHARD THOMAS'S SCI-FI WORLDS COLUMNS FOR BINNALL OF AMERICA

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