FRESNO, Calif. (WTVG) – David Hardcastle, 61, of Fresno, has been charged with six counts of fraud following the collapse of Bitwise, a tech company that went under in May 2023. The indictment comes less than two months after the founders and former co-CEOs of Bitwise, Jake Soberal and Irma Olguin Jr., were sentenced to prison.
A federal grand jury indicted Hardcastle on Monday, charging him with conspiracy to commit wire fraud and substantive wire fraud. He allegedly defrauded investors through loans made to Bitwise, totaling around $20 million.
According to court documents, Hardcastle and his associate, Andrew Adler of Connecticut, used Startop Investments LLC to syndicate these loans from December 2022 to May 2023. They altered the original loan documents to reduce the apparent risk of the investments and forged the signature of Soberal to make the loans more attractive to investors.
Hardcastle and Adler allegedly pocketed tens of thousands of dollars in origination fees for these loans. Prosecutors claim that had the loans been repaid, the duo could have made millions in undisclosed profits. The loans included a $700,000 secured interest reserve, which they used for an unrelated investment in another company they operated, without investor consent.
The Bitwise collapse left investors with significant losses, as the loans were never repaid, and the company went bankrupt. Hardcastle faces a maximum of 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine for conspiracy to commit wire fraud, with additional charges for each of the substantive wire fraud counts. Adler, who has entered into a plea agreement, is scheduled to plead guilty in federal court in March.
