Wash trading is the theatre of buying and selling against yourself — or against wallets you quietly control — so charts and ranking sites show lively turnover. No independent buyer has to arrive. A genuine market maker takes inventory risk with outside traders; a wash desk mostly pays fees to keep the ticker spinning.
That model is no longer just street gossip. In the United States District of Massachusetts, Gotbit Consulting LLC and its founder Aleksei Andriunin pleaded guilty to wire fraud and conspiracy tied to market manipulation. Court materials describe years of artificial volume for client tokens, including campaigns aimed at trending lists. In June 2025 Andriunin was sentenced to eight months’ imprisonment and a year of supervised release; the company took probation, agreed to stop operating and forfeited roughly twenty-three million dollars in cryptocurrency, according to Justice Department reporting.
MyTrade’s founder Liu Zhou (also known as David Zhou) pleaded guilty after prosecutors said the firm’s “Volume Support” dashboard let clients order a daily wash-trade target and bots filled it across venues. As part of that resolution the wash-trading tools were shut down and the site had to state that volume support is illegal under U.S. law. ZM Quant and certain employees were charged in the same wider operation, including alleged work around the FBI-linked NexFundAI token; treat ZM Quant as accused unless and until a conviction is entered — an indictment is not a verdict.
For a retail buyer the lesson is blunt. Spike volume on a thin token, especially when it magically hits aggregator “trending” boards, is not proof of organic demand. Prefer deep books on venues you trust, assume early charts can be staged, and never buy because a stranger’s Telegram screenshot looks busy.
If you already bought into a painted market and someone now offers paid “recovery”, stop (Fake recovery) and use Get help.
This article is for general information only. It is not legal or financial advice. Details change. If you have lost money, contact your bank or card issuer and use the routes on the help pages.