The Department of Justice announced the conviction of HYDRO founder Shane Hampton and head of financial engineering Michael Kane for manipulating the price of Hydrogen Technology's HYDRO tokens. The enforcement agency also said that the two men's sale of HYDRO constituted an unregistered investment contract, and they were sentenced to two years and 11 months and three years and nine months in prison, respectively. After investigation, it was found that the two hired a third-party company, Moonwalkers Trading Limited of South Africa, to use automated robots to place false transactions worth $7 million and false orders worth more than $300 million on the HYDRO market. "Shane Hampton, Michael Kane and their co-conspirators used trading robots to manipulate their companies' cryptocurrency prices to defraud investors," said Nicole Argentieri, head of the Justice Department's criminal division. "This is the first time in a federal criminal trial that a jury has found cryptocurrency to be a security and that manipulation of cryptocurrency prices is securities fraud."