The former chief executive of Trident Acquisitions Corp Vadim Komissarov, has been sentenced to three years in prison for securities fraud after admitting to a scheme that misled investors ahead of the company’s merger with Lottery.com.
The sentence was announced on Wednesday by the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, with US Attorney Jay Clayton confirming that Komissarov was sentenced by Alvin K. Hellerstein after pleading guilty to one count of securities fraud in February 2026.
Komissarov orchestrated a scheme between November 2020 and May 2022 that created the false appearance of revenue-generating business activity at AutoLotto before its merger with Trident, and later at Lottery.com following the completion of the transaction.
The companies merged in 2021, and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) began to investigate Trident in June 2023 before looking into Lottery.com in August 2023.
Komissarov sold 300,000 Lottery.com shares for over $600,000 in April 2022 and May 2022 – before Lottery.com telling its investors it had identified errors in reported revenue and available cash.
The government alleged that the fraud relied on a series of sham transactions, including a fraudulent $9m round-trip transaction that Komissarov allegedly arranged while using the alias “Vlad”.
Prosecutors said the false revenue figures were used to mislead both Trident shareholders ahead of the merger vote and investors in the combined Lottery.com business.
Authorities also accused Komissarov of attempting to obstruct the aforementioned investigation by the SEC.
The warning to Lottery.com execs
Court filings state that he sought to coordinate a false narrative with Lottery.com executives to conceal his involvement in the sham transactions, and later provided false and misleading sworn testimony to the regulator regarding both his communications and his role in the $9m transaction.
An example of the concealment came in this conversation, revealed by the US Attorney’s Office, where Komissarov said: “guys, you do understand, you say that I was involved with this transaction . . . . if Trident and me specifically knew about it, then I am in deep, deep, deep, deep water . . . .
“So, if you come out and say that I was involved, then I am in deep sh*t.”
Commenting on the sentence, Clayton said: “Vadim Komissarov, the former CEO of Trident Acquisitions Corp, is going to prison for defrauding his shareholders.
“This Office will continue to work with our law enforcement partners to hold executives of public companies accountable when they commit fraud and lie about it.”
In addition to the three-year custodial sentence, Komissarov was ordered to serve three years of supervised release and forfeit the $607,028.70 in proceeds from the sale of Lottery.com shares before the fraud became public.