Former Saitama chief executive Manpreet Kohli is a step closer to being extradited from the United Kingdom to the United States after losing a court challenge against facing American fraud and market-manipulation charges tied to the once multibillion-dollar cryptocurrency project.
The 45-year-old Indian national led Saitama, which promoted a token on the Ethereum blockchain that at one point reached a market value of about $7.5 billion, according to Reuters. U.S. prosecutors allege that Kohli and his co-conspirators told investors they were buying and holding Saitama tokens while privately selling them for millions of dollars in profit.
Crypto Times reported that prosecutors allege Kohli personally received approximately $20 million from the alleged scheme. The allegations remain unproven in court.
UK Judge Rejects Kohli’s Extradition Challenge
Reuters stated that Kohli was arrested in London in 2024 after U.S. prosecutors charged him and more than a dozen others with offenses connected to alleged widespread cryptocurrency fraud.
He challenged extradition partly on the grounds that U.S. authorities would not provide adequate safeguards against the risk that he could take his own life while in custody. But Judge Samuel Goozee rejected the challenge on August 19, finding that appropriate arrangements were available during transit and within the U.S. prison system to manage those risks.
The decision sends the case to British ministers to determine whether extradition should formally proceed, a stage Reuters describes as usually a formality. Kohli remains free on £200,000 ($272,420) bail and retains the right to appeal.
US Case Targets Token Promotion and Insider Selling
At the center of the prosecution is an increasingly familiar crypto-enforcement question: whether executives used public statements about a token while privately trading against the market they were promoting.
Crypto Times said prosecutors accuse members of the group of publicly claiming they were purchasing and holding Saitama while privately selling significant amounts. If extradited, Kohli faces allegations including wire fraud and market manipulation.
Reuters reported that the investigation was also unusual because the FBI created its own digital token for the first time as part of an operation to uncover suspected crypto crime.
Earlier in August, a federal judge in Boston also rejected Kohli’s attempt to dismiss the indictment based on the argument that the Saitama token could not legally be treated as a security under U.S. securities law.
Crypto Enforcement Is Becoming Borderless
For crypto founders and investors, Kohli’s case demonstrates how enforcement increasingly extends beyond where a token company or executive is physically based.
Blockchain projects may operate globally, but prosecutors can combine transaction records, exchange activity and international extradition mechanisms to pursue executives across jurisdictions.
That creates a broader governance lesson for crypto companies: token-market conduct, promotional claims and insider transactions increasingly carry risks that do not disappear when teams operate outside the United States.
Kohli has not yet been extradited, and the U.S. allegations still must be tested in court. But the UK ruling shows that for crypto executives, jurisdictional distance is becoming a much weaker shield against U.S. enforcement.
