That fact, as presented by the brief, deserves a place in an assessment of the defense. It is neither a guarantee of innocence nor an irrelevant personal detail. It offers a reason to examine the decision from the perspective of the person making it, before the eventual collapse made the consequences clear.

What the brief says the investments had in common

The opening brief describes HighTower as a business designed to offer institutional customers yield through decentralized-finance platforms associated with Terra. It says Fabric's money was invested in UST through those platforms and that Shetty placed his own savings in a HighTower account. Counsel connects these commitments through a shared belief in the investment model.

The brief also recounts that HighTower's co-founder invested personal money. Its narrative is therefore of founders and a corporate customer exposed to the same underlying venture, rather than a venture whose promoters expected to benefit from its collapse. That is the defense's account of the evidence and its significance, not an appellate determination of every participant's state of mind.

The significance of the personal commitment is the financial exposure it created. Counsel presents Shetty as putting his own savings behind the investment whose prospects he was assessing for Fabric. That shared position supports the brief's account of his confidence in the venture, while leaving the legal questions about Fabric's money to be examined separately.

The proposed inference concerns belief at the time

Counsel uses shared exposure to challenge the allegation of an intent to cheat. If Shetty believed the investment would preserve and grow money he personally depended upon, the defense argues, that belief is relevant to whether he intended to deprive Fabric of its property. The argument asks for an assessment of purpose, rather than an assumption that the outcome reveals everything about the original decision.

This is where the chronology does important work. The brief describes an initial period in which the investment generated interest, followed by the Terra collapse. It says the collapse devastated both Fabric's investment and Shetty's personal exposure. The defense's inference about earlier belief comes from the investment commitments and surrounding circumstances, not merely from the later fact that he also lost money.

Shared losses can make the consequences more understandable without resolving the legal case. A person might sincerely believe an investment will succeed while still failing to disclose material information or acting outside granted authority. The appeal addresses those questions separately. Personal exposure supports a proposed inference about intent; it does not supply every element of the defense by itself.

The brief acknowledges poor judgment

The opening pages explicitly describe the investment judgment as poor and recognize significant harm. That acknowledgment gives the argument a clear boundary. Counsel is not asking readers to recast the collapse as a successful business decision or to dismiss the consequences for Fabric. They are arguing that poor judgment and criminal purpose are different propositions requiring different evidence.

The distinction matters particularly when the amount lost is large. A financial result can be catastrophic even if the investor expected success. Conversely, a transaction can involve fraud even if it produces a return. Evaluating intent requires attention to the alleged scheme, the information available and the actions taken, rather than treating profit and loss as a complete legal test.

An earlier defense motion concerning investment-performance evidence addressed the risk of reasoning backward from the collapse. That district-court filing is related history, not the July 2026 appeal and not a ruling excluding the evidence. The new brief advances the issue through its account of the trial record and Shetty's personal financial commitment.

Expected success is evidence, not an automatic exemption

The Supreme Court's Kousisis decision prevents an overly simple conclusion that an expectation of mutual benefit always defeats fraud. Fraudulent inducement can support liability without an intended net economic loss. The defense therefore cannot rely solely on a claim that Fabric might have profited. Its argument is that the evidence, considered as a whole, did not establish the required intent to obtain or deprive another of property through deception.

That is the proper setting for the savings evidence. It bears on the credibility and content of the defense's account of Shetty's purpose. It can be examined alongside the ownership structure, customer-account arrangement, disclosures and investment authority. Treating it as one meaningful part of the record avoids both exaggerating its legal effect and excluding it from the story altogether.

The TheStreet commentary on the Terra collapse offers a sympathetic wider discussion of investor perceptions and hindsight. Shetty's public materials provide his broader account. The appellate brief supplies the specific claim about shared exposure and the legal use counsel proposes for it. These sources serve different functions in understanding the defense.

Shetty's November 2025 conviction and March 2026 two-year prison sentence are the judgments the appellate arguments seek to challenge. The brief asks for acquittal or alternative relief; it does not establish that the convictions have been reversed. Its account of personal investment is part of that request for review.

For readers considering Shetty's position, the point is concrete. The defense asks that his financial commitment to the same venture be considered when assessing what he believed and intended. Recognizing that evidence does not erase the harm. It gives the analysis a fuller foundation, one that distinguishes misplaced confidence in an investment from the specific criminal intent the government was required to prove.

The distinction is the foundation of the brief's obtaining argument. It does not depend on saying that corporate cash is not property. It asks whether the transaction, as described by counsel through the trial record, established the particular acquisition of property required for the convictions. That makes the ownership and account arrangement central to the analysis.

Start with the transaction the brief describes

According to the opening brief, Fabric's funds went into a HighTower account in Fabric's name. HighTower invested on the customer's behalf through Terra-related protocols. The brief says the arrangement contemplated a stated return to Fabric, with HighTower retaining earnings above that rate. Counsel describes that difference as the business's expected spread.

The appeal compares the revenue model to the way financial intermediaries earn a difference between returns received and payments made to customers. This is a comparison of the proposed source of revenue, not a claim that HighTower had the same regulation, guarantees or risk profile as a conventional bank. Nothing about the comparison itself establishes that the investment was safe.

The distinction matters because a business can expect to earn revenue from a customer's transaction without treating the customer's entire principal as its own profit. The defense argues that this is the arrangement the evidence described. Whether the legal effect of the transfers supports that characterization is the issue counsel asks the court to resolve.

The appeal relies on testimony about customer ownership

The brief cites testimony by HighTower CEO Adam Brazg concerning whose money was held in customer accounts. As the brief recounts it, Brazg identified the deposits as customer money and rejected the proposition that Fabric's deposit became HighTower's money. Counsel uses that testimony to support the claim that the plan was not to acquire Fabric's principal.

These statements enter the article through the opening brief's account of the record. They are not new interview answers and do not constitute a Ninth Circuit finding. Their significance is that the defense identifies particular trial evidence for its obtaining argument rather than relying only on the label investment or on a general denial of wrongdoing.

The brief also says Fabric treated the amount as an investment loss on its tax return. Counsel offers that classification as further support for its account of the transaction. A company's tax treatment does not independently decide a federal criminal charge. It is one item the appeal places alongside the account structure and cited testimony.

Principal and anticipated earnings answer different questions

Shetty's ownership interest in HighTower remains part of the picture. The brief acknowledges undisclosed self-dealing and the prospect that he could benefit if the business earned money. The defense's argument is that this anticipated benefit did not establish a plan to acquire the customer's principal. It asks the appellate court to identify the property object of the alleged scheme with greater precision.

That distinction does not imply that expected profits from a deceptive transaction are legally irrelevant. A fraud theory can concern money obtained through material deception, and the receipt of some value in exchange does not automatically defeat liability. The question raised by the brief is what the government proved about the particular property interest and acquisition at issue here.

The appeal invokes Kousisis v. United States when discussing the ordinary meaning of obtaining. The same decision also allows fraudulent-inducement liability without an intended net economic loss. Those propositions belong together. The defense cannot win simply by asserting that Fabric was supposed to receive a benefit; it must establish why the evidence did not satisfy the property theory charged.

Distinguish the conviction issue from financial remedies

An earlier opposition to forfeiture also addressed personal acquisition and corporate receipts. It provides related district-court history, rather than the text of the July appellate brief. The two issues are connected by their attention to who received property, but the legal requirements of a fraud conviction and a forfeiture award cannot simply be treated as identical.

That separation helps explain the opening brief's structure. Its first major section challenges the evidence supporting the convictions. Later sections challenge the financial orders. An argument that an individual did not personally acquire corporate receipts can be relevant to a remedy without automatically resolving every question about the underlying offense. Each requested result requires its own legal analysis.

The NACDL amicus from the earlier proceedings supplies background to the debate over the reach of property-fraud law. Shetty's website places those submissions alongside his broader account. The July brief adds its account of trial testimony and asks the appellate court to apply the law to that record.

Shetty was convicted in November 2025 and sentenced to two years in prison in March 2026. His lawyers' account of customer ownership is an argument against those convictions, not a report that they have been set aside. The brief acknowledges the disastrous investment result while disputing the criminal conclusion drawn from the transfers.

Its strongest contribution is precision. Customer principal, a company's expected revenue and an owner's potential share of profit are related financial interests, but they are not the same thing. The appeal asks the court to keep those distinctions visible when deciding whether the prosecution proved a scheme to obtain property. That is a concrete basis for examining Shetty's defense beyond the fact that a substantial loss occurred.