Ensnared

David Sneddon’s trouble with federal agents started at a booth where he was selling pythons, red-tailed boas and rattlesnakes at Repticon, a reptile trade show in South Carolina.A customer inspecting his Mojave sidewinders took Sneddon’s phone number. Sneddon had no idea the man was an undercover informant for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.For the next 18 months, federal agents surreptitiously recorded all of the informant’s phone conversations with Sneddon and intercepted all of their texts as they arranged…

 Last year's crypto-market meltdown triggered a series of bankruptcies that almost completely reshaped the digital-asset industry. This year, government watchdogs appear to be arriving on the scene to finish the job.The past week saw the industry hit with another deluge of enforcement news, from the SEC's threat to take legal action against Coinbase Inc. and its suit against the Tron blockchain network to the apprehension of crypto fugitive Do Kwon. Even celebrity crypto promoters like actress Lindsay Lohan and rapper…

Cryptocurrency lender Genesis Global Holdco LLC and two of its lending subsidiaries filed for bankruptcy protection late Thursday night in New York, the latest domino to fall after the failure of crypto exchange FTX.The bankruptcy marks the end of an era in which the lending of crypto assets fueled trades by both individual and institutional investors chasing high yields. A big drop in crypto prices that began in late 2021 led to the collapse of many companies that depended on that business model. Genesis held on longer…