Singapore prosecutors charged Zhu Juntao, 36, co-founder and former chief executive of crypto lending platform Hodlnaut Pte. Ltd., with six counts of fraud by false representation on May 26, 2026. Zhu, a former Credit Suisse employee, co-founded Hodlnaut in 2019.

The charges allege that Zhu personally published misleading statements on social media and instructed employees to deceive users about the company's exposure to TerraUSD (UST) in the weeks following that stablecoin's catastrophic collapse in May 2022. Zhu pleaded not guilty. A pre-trial conference is scheduled for June 2026.

The Singapore Police Force said Zhu directed Hodlnaut employees to post false statements in the company's official Telegram group and in emails sent directly to users between May and July 2022, "asserting that Hodlnaut did not have direct exposure to UST and/or did not suffer losses arising from the crash of UST." Three of the six charges relate to Zhu's personal conduct; court documents separately note that he personally published three misleading posts on his Twitter/X account in June 2022. The remaining three counts allege abetment, meaning prosecutors say he instigated others to repeat the same false claims. Each charge carries a maximum penalty of 20 years imprisonment, a fine, or both.

The alleged statements were false by a wide margin. Hodlnaut had routed approximately $317 million of user funds into UST through the Anchor Protocol, a lending product built on the Terra blockchain that offered high yields on stablecoin deposits. When UST lost its peg to the US dollar in early May 2022, triggering a collapse that wiped out roughly $60 billion in combined LUNA and UST market value, Hodlnaut suffered realized losses of approximately $189.7 million to $193 million, according to court filings from the platform's judicial managers. One statement attributed to Zhu in court documents read: "Hodlnaut as a firm did not take any losses on UST; users who held/bought UST on our platform did." The judicial managers later told the Singapore High Court that the company's directors had "downplayed the extent of the group's exposure to Terra/Luna both during the period leading up to and following the Terra/Luna collapse."

The platform froze withdrawals on August 8, 2022, citing "recent market conditions." The Singapore High Court placed Hodlnaut under interim judicial management later that month, appointing EY professionals as administrators. Court documents also revealed that Hodlnaut's founders deleted more than 1,000 files during the investigation period. The company's troubles compounded when FTX collapsed in November 2022, leaving an additional $13.1 million in user assets stranded on that exchange. A winding-up order issued by the Singapore High Court in November 2023 converted the proceedings to liquidation. Approximately 17,000 users remain creditors in those ongoing proceedings as of late 2024, down from a peak user base of more than 30,000. As of the time of filing, no charges had been publicly announced against Hodlnaut co-founder Simon Lee.

The prosecution arrives against a broader enforcement backdrop in Asia. In December 2025, a US federal court sentenced Do Kwon, co-founder of Terraform Labs, to 15 years in prison for fraud related to the same Terra collapse. The judge in that case estimated the scheme had potentially one million victims globally. Singapore itself recorded S$456.4 million in total fraud losses in the first half of 2025, with cryptocurrency-related fraud accounting for more than S$81 million of that total. Singapore's action against Zhu, filed nearly four years after the alleged offences, signals that authorities are willing to pursue long-tail enforcement even when a platform has already been wound up and full restitution appears unlikely for most creditors.

For operators and users across South Asia and Africa, the case carries practical weight. Hodlnaut drew users from markets including India, Nigeria, Kenya, Sri Lanka, and Pakistan, where platforms offering yields of up to approximately 10 percent annually on stablecoin deposits functioned as a dollar-denominated savings alternative amid local currency depreciation.

The charges focus specifically on communications sent through Telegram and email, among the most common channels through which crypto platforms in these regions interact with retail users. Singapore prosecutors are treating those posts and messages as material false representations under the Penal Code, not informal community updates. The charges suggest that prosecutors may treat personal social media posts made by founders as carrying the same potential liability as official corporate disclosures, a position that has not yet been tested at trial.

Singapore currently licenses 33 crypto firms under the Monetary Authority of Singapore's framework, with the regulator describing further approvals as available only in "extremely limited circumstances."

For the 17,000 creditors still awaiting partial recovery through EY's liquidation process, the criminal proceedings offer accountability, though they operate separately from the liquidation process through which creditors may ultimately recover funds.