Zhu Juntao, the 36-year-old co-founder and former CEO of Singapore-based crypto lender Hodlnaut, was formally charged with fraud by false representation in a Singapore court on May 26, 2026 — nearly four years after the Terra/LUNA collapse precipitated the platform’s downfall and left more than 30,000 users exposed.
The Commercial Affairs Department of the Singapore Police Force, which has been probing Hodlnaut and its directors since November 2022, filed six counts against Zhu. Three counts allege fraud under Section 424A(1)(a) read with Section 424A(3) of the Penal Code; three mirror those counts but add abetment under Section 109. If convicted on each count, Zhu faces up to 20 years’ imprisonment, a fine, or both, the police said.
Prosecutors say the alleged deception occurred in the critical weeks following TerraUSD’s catastrophic de-pegging in May 2022. Between May and July 2022, Zhu is accused of directing employees to post reassuring but false statements on Hodlnaut’s official Telegram channel and to send emails to users asserting the platform had “not taken any losses as a firm” and had no direct exposure to UST. One email reportedly went to 30 recipients declaring the company assumed no losses. Authorities allege those communications were meant to mislead customers while losses mounted.
Public records and court filings after Hodlnaut froze withdrawals in August 2022 painted a far bleaker picture. An interim judicial managers’ report — later reported by Bloomberg — found the lender had lost roughly $190 million through exposure to the collapsed Terra ecosystem. On-chain analytics firms also identified material UST and Terraform Labs-linked activity that the company had not disclosed. When Hodlnaut applied for creditor protection in August 2022, court documents revealed a $193 million shortfall; court-appointed managers later confirmed an additional $13.1 million of user assets were trapped on the collapsed FTX exchange.
Singapore’s High Court ordered Hodlnaut’s liquidation, and EY partners were appointed joint liquidators. At his May 26 hearing, Zhu pleaded not guilty and denied the allegations; a pre-trial conference is scheduled for June 2026, Channel News Asia reported.
The case is one of several follow-ups to the 2022 crypto contagion sparked by Terra’s collapse — a chain reaction that exposed vulnerabilities across the industry and contributed to the failures of Celsius, Voyager, Three Arrows Capital and ultimately FTX, costing retail investors billions. That it has taken nearly four years for these criminal charges to reach court underscores both the complexity of crypto-related investigations and the slow grind of legal accountability in the aftermath of the industry’s largest crises.
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