Hwang was ordered on Thursday to serve 18 years in prison by a U.S. district court judge for those convictions. He was also ordered to pay more than US$9 billion in restitution and to three years of supervised release.

According to court filings, in 2020, Hwang began using tactics to artificially manipulate the prices of securities in the hedge fund’s portfolios, including “high closing,” a process that involves driving up the price of securities toward the close of the trading day, which triggered payouts to the fund.

He also allegedly engaged in coordinated, high volume traded designed to distort the markets for certain portfolio holdings and made misleading statements to the fund’s counterparties after they began imposing limits on its trading, which furthered the scheme, and hid the true risk of dealing with Archegos.

Ultimately, the scheme collapsed in March 2021, when Archegos was hit with large margin calls that it couldn’t meet and the fund failed, causing billions of dollars in losses at various investment banks that had financed its trading, including Credit Suisse, Morgan Stanley and Nomura.

The firm’s collapse sent shockwaves through financial markets.

“Bill Hwang weaponized his personal hedge fund, Archegos, to pursue financial fraud on a national scale.  For months on end, Hwang and his co-conspirators used an array of lies and manipulative trading strategies to rig the stock market in Hwang’s favour,” said Edward Kim, acting U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, in a release.

“Hwang’s crimes brought him to the brink of staggering wealth before his fraud collapsed and left investors, banks, and even Hwang’s own employees with billions of dollars in losses.”

The firm’s failure also led to calls for reform in global financial markets, including measures proposed by the Financial Stability Board earlier this week to address the buildup of leverage in the shadow banking sector, along with recent proposals from the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision on counterparty credit risk management, and efforts to reform global liquidity rules.

The hedge fund’s former chief financial officer, Patrick Halligan, was also charged and convicted for his role in the scheme. He is due to be sentenced on Jan. 27, 2025.