Nishad Singh initially asked SBF to tell people he knew nothing about the FTX situation: Going Infinite

Nishad Singh, former director of engineering for the bankrupt crypto exchange FTX, had asked the firm's co-founder Sam Bankman-Fried to claim his innocence after FTX's cracks were revealed. 

The revelation comes from Michael Lewis's book "Going Infinite," which delves into the fall of FTX. In a conversation between Singh, FTX co-founder Gary Wang and Bankman-Fried, Singh asked Bankman-Fried what he should do if law enforcement reached out. 

Singh allegedly asked how the FTX leadership should "cooperate in a prisoner's dilemma," in which there's no way to ensure everyone claims the other's innocence. Bankman-Fried then stated that there wasn't any reason to assume anyone had criminal intent. 

According to Going Infinite, Singh pressed Bankman-Fried to say that Singh didn't know anything about the situation, that he "had no clue." Bankman-Fried told Singh to say that he didn't know anything. 

"It’s not going to work for me," Singh responded. "Because there is code-based evidence of what I did."

Singh's guilty plea

Come February of 2023, Singh had changed his mind. He planned to plead guilty to criminal charges and to cooperate with law enforcement regarding FTX's collapse.

Two weeks later, the Securities and Exchange Commission charged Singh with defrauding customers after he pocketed $6 million in FTX customer funds for personal use, The Block previously reported.