Fresno man pleads guilty in Bitwise fraud case tied to $45 million loss

A Fresno man has admitted helping push Bitwise Industries loans into the hands of other investors in a scheme prosecutors say helped produce about $45 million in losses, keeping the fallout from downtown Fresno’s biggest startup collapse in federal court.

David Hardcastle, 61, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud in two separate cases, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of California. He now faces up to 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine when he is sentenced Sept. 14.

Court documents say Hardcastle and his business partner, Andrew Adler, used Startop Investments LLC to make about $20 million in high-interest hard money loans to Bitwise Industries from December 2022 through May 2023. Prosecutors say the pair then altered and split the original loan documents before selling them to other investors, making it appear that Bitwise owed less interest than it actually did.

That detail goes to the heart of the damage. Prosecutors say investors were misled about the true terms and risks tied to the loans, meaning the losses spread beyond Bitwise itself and into the broader lending network that had supported the company. The guilty plea adds another layer to a collapse that already shook confidence among local investors, workers and lenders and raised fresh questions about the credibility of downtown Fresno’s business scene.

Bitwise’s failure became public in May 2023, when the company furloughed about 900 employees before laying them off. The company’s co-founders, Jake Soberal and Irma Olguin Jr., later pleaded guilty to wire fraud and wire-fraud conspiracy in connection with a separate $115 million fraud case. They were sentenced in December 2024 to 11 years and 9 years in prison, respectively.

Adler, Hardcastle’s partner in the Startop case, previously pleaded guilty and was sentenced in June 2025 to three years and five months in prison. Federal prosecutors say the Hardcastle cases together produced a combined loss of about $45 million, and they also connect him to a separate Voyager Pacific Capital Management case.

For Fresno, the latest plea shows the Bitwise fallout is still not finished. Even after the company’s founders were sentenced, prosecutors continue to pursue related fraud cases, and the losses tied to Bitwise’s rise and collapse continue to ripple through the Central Valley business community.