SEC v. Ishan Wahi et al. (insider listing trading, 2024)

Judgment entered

✓ Checked against the primary document on October 3, 2026. The library's summary, tags and figures for this record were compared with the regulator's own document by an AI model (Claude) following written instructions, with sampled and disputed records read a second time. No lawyer has reviewed them. A checked record can still contain errors, and checked does not mean endorsed. See how we check records or report a correction.

Report an error in this record (sec-ishan-wahi-et-al-insider-listing-trading-2024) by email

In March 2024 the SEC reported a default final judgment, entered March 1, 2024, against Sameer Ramani for trading ahead of Coinbase listing announcements on tips from his friend Ishan Wahi, a Coinbase product manager. Ramani must pay $817,602 in disgorgement and a $1,635,204 penalty. Final judgments against Ishan and Nikhil Wahi had already been entered, which concludes the litigation.

The record

What was ordered

Civil penalty

$1.6m

Disgorgement

$818k

Prejudgment interest

—

Total relief

$2.5m

Alleged gain

—

A dash means the release did not state a figure we could extract, not that the figure is zero. Penalty and disgorgement are stored separately so aggregates across the library do not double-count the same dollars.

What is alleged to have happened

The Securities and Exchange Commission announced this judgment on March 11, 2024 as litigation release LR-25947, in SEC v. Wahi et al., civil action 22-civ-01009 in the Western District of Washington, filed July 21, 2022. The defendants are Ishan Wahi, Nikhil Wahi and Sameer Ramani (3 individuals, 0 entities); the release reports the judgment against Ramani. Earlier versions of this record named only "Ishan Wahi et al." and omitted the penalty.

The complaint alleged that, from at least June 2021 to April 2022, Ishan Wahi, a product manager who helped coordinate Coinbase's public listing announcements, tipped the timing and content of upcoming listings, which Coinbase treated as confidential, to Ramani and his brother Nikhil Wahi. They allegedly bought at least 25 crypto assets, at least nine of them securities, ahead of announcements that usually lifted prices and sold shortly afterwards.

The default judgment enjoins Ramani from violating Section 10(b) and Rule 10b-5 and orders disgorgement of $817,602 and a civil penalty of $1,635,204. Those are Ramani's figures; the Wahi brothers' judgments were entered earlier and are not quantified in this release.

For the regulator's own account of the facts, read the primary document linked above.

What technique is this, and how does it work?

This action is tagged with 2 techniques in our taxonomy. The tagging is ours: regulators charge statutory provisions, not technique names, so the mapping is an editorial judgement described in our editorial policy.

• Insider listing trading — see how it works, what statute it engages, and every other action tagged the same way.
• Insider trading — see how it works, what statute it engages, and every other action tagged the same way.

Timeline

1. 2024-03-11 Litigation release published

Primary documents

Everything on this page derives from the documents below. Where our summary and the primary document disagree, the primary document is right.

• SEC litigation release

The linked release is a work of the United States government and is not subject to copyright. Our summary and narrative above are our own writing.

Related actions

Other actions in the library sharing at least one technique tag with this one.

Record added September 10, 2026. submit a correction.