Saitama chief executive Manpreet Kohli has lost his UK court challenge against extradition to the United States, where prosecutors have charged him with wire fraud and cryptocurrency market manipulation tied to a token once valued at $7.5 billion.
Saitama CEO Loses UK Extradition Challenge
Reuters reported that Judge Samuel Goozee rejected Kohli's challenge on Aug. 19 and sent the case to British ministers, who will decide whether to order his extradition. The 45-year-old Indian national remains free on 200,000 pounds bail and can appeal the ruling. Kohli led Saitama, a cryptocurrency company that promoted an Ethereum-based token that at one point reached a market capitalization of about $7.5 billion. U.S. prosecutors allege Kohli and other people involved with the project publicly claimed they were buying and holding Saitama tokens while privately selling their holdings for millions of dollars.
Prosecutors allege Kohli made about $20 million through the scheme. During the extradition proceedings, Kohli argued that safeguards in the United States would not adequately address the risk that he could take his own life while in custody. Goozee rejected that argument after considering arrangements for Kohli during transit and within the U.S. prison system. This case is part of a broader U.S. crypto enforcement crackdown, similar to the CFTC case against a US soldier over a Polymarket bet.
FBI Token Operation Targeted Fake Trading Volume
Kohli was arrested in London in 2024 after U.S. prosecutors charged him in a case involving more than a dozen individuals and companies accused of manipulating cryptocurrency markets. The investigation also produced an unusual enforcement operation in which the FBI created its own cryptocurrency and used undercover agents to approach market makers suspected of offering services designed to fabricate trading activity. The agency created NexFundAI as part of Operation Token Mirrors to investigate wash trading and pump-and-dump activity.
Undercover FBI agents posed as members of the NexFundAI project and approached market makers about generating trading activity. Market makers contacted during the investigation allegedly offered services that could create artificial trading volume through wash trades. Firms named in connection with the operation included Gotbit, MyTrade, CLS Global and ZM Quant. This enforcement operation parallels other crypto crime investigations, including the Chainalysis identification of 7,700 suspect accounts in a separate operation.
Gotbit Admitted Manipulating Saitama Trading Activity
Gotbit, one of the market makers caught up in the federal investigation, admitted providing wash trading services between 2018 and 2024. The company manipulated trading volume for client cryptocurrencies, including Saitama and Robo Inu. Founder and CEO Aleksei Andriunin was sentenced to eight months in prison in June 2025 after pleading guilty to wire fraud and conspiracy to commit market manipulation. He agreed to forfeit about $23 million in stablecoins.
Another market maker, CLS Global, faced criminal penalties after admitting to wash trading involving the FBI-created NexFundAI token. A Boston federal court sentenced CLS Global in April 2025 and ordered the UAE-registered company to pay $428,000. Russell Armand and Maxwell Hernandez, who were also involved with Saitama, later pleaded guilty to criminal charges connected to the government's investigation. Kohli also challenged the criminal case pending against him in U.S. courts, but the court allowed the charges to proceed.