Archegos Capital Management founder Bill Hwang and its former chief financial officer, Patrick Halligan, were indicted on securities fraud and racketeering charges on Wednesday in what prosecutors said was a massive fraud and manipulation scheme that nearly jeopardized the U.S. financial system, the Wall Street Journal reported. Archegos collapsed in March 2021, leaving banks with more than $10 billion in losses and sparking calls for more regulatory oversight. More than $100 billion in stock market value vanished in a matter of days. Damian Williams, U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, described the purported scheme as historic in scope, alleging that defendants and their co-conspirators lied to banks to obtain billions of dollars in loans, which they then used to inflate the stock price of publicly traded companies. (Subscription required.)
