(Bloomberg) — Archegos Capital Management founder Bill Hwang will be sentenced Wednesday on fraud and market manipulation charges linked to the stunning collapse of his $36 billion family office in 2021, capping a case that captivated Wall Street has done.

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Prosecutors have recommended that Hwang, 60, spend more than 20 years behind bars, while his lawyers have asked that he receive no jail time at all. The government also wants Hwang to pay $10 billion in restitution, although his lawyers said Monday he is now worth only about $55 million.

U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein will hand down the sentence after a hearing in which both sides, and possibly Hwang himself, will speak.

Criminal conviction of Archegos’ Hwang, explained: QuickTake

The case put a spotlight on a relatively unknown trader who seemingly built a hugely successful business, only to see it crash in spectacular fashion. The implosion of Archegos also contributed to the demise of one of the biggest names in the financial world, Credit Suisse Group AG, and caused significant losses at Morgan Stanley, UBS Group AG, Nomura Holdings and other banks.

Hwang was found guilty in July of orchestrating a scheme to deceive his counterparties into providing Archegos with billions of dollars in trading capacity. Although the banks were told that the company had large positions in technology giants such as Apple Inc. and Microsoft Corp., Hwang essentially put his money into a small group of fairly illiquid stocks, specifically the company then known as ViacomCBS, so his trades could shift. .

To maximize the impact of his trades, Hwang typically bought swaps, knowing his counterparty banks would hedge by buying shares directly. Archegos entered a fatal spiral after a sell-off of Viacom shares in March 2021 led to billions of dollars in margin calls.

That the victims were primarily Wall Street banks set Archegos apart from most large white-collar cases. Hwang’s lawyers planned to argue that the banks were sophisticated players who understood the risks of trading with Archegos but used them to earn lucrative fees. Hellerstein largely sided with prosecutors in ruling out a “blame the victim” defense, and that could be a major issue in a planned appeal of his conviction.

The defense did manage to occasionally draw attention to the profit motives of the banks in their dealings with Archegos. Product Specialist Nastassia Locasto of Goldman Sachs Group Inc. testified at trial that her bank initially had questions about Archegos’ assets, but ultimately decided to trade with Hwang’s family office because the latter knew his Wall Street rivals were making millions in fees. “They paid our colleagues,” she said.

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