Bankman Fried

The initialed criminal on bail, knows where all the bodies and bribes are buried.

He is not going to walk away, he is going to end up dead while out on bail.

Sam Bankman-Fried

FTX

Sam Bankman-Fried cannot shut up

Bankman-Fried, the co-founder and former CEO of the cryptocurrency exchange FTX, is facing 12 civil and criminal charges—including securities fraud, wire fraud, and conspiracy to commit money laundering—brought by the US Justice Department, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. In short, Bankman-Fried is accused of mismanaging customer deposits and using them to make risky bets through a hedge fund he controlled called Alameda Research.

But in the months since FTX fell apart, Bankman-Fried has refused to stop talking. He’s participated in interviews with journalists, public events, and conversations on Twitter Spaces. He’s tweeted incessantly about the company, its finances, and why he believes he is innocent and the company could have survived if it didn’t declare bankruptcy in the aftermath of a bank run. (“Never in my career have I seen such a complete failure of corporate controls and such a complete absence of trustworthy financial information as occurred here,” John Ray III, the corporate litigator who oversaw Enron’s bankruptcy and was tapped to guide FTX through its liquidation, wrote in a recent bankruptcy court filing.)

Bankman-Fried may go down as one of the great fraudsters in modern business. And whether or not his public statements will lead to his downfall, one thing is certain: He’ll have his say.

The Fifth Amendment doesn’t protect Bankman-Fried from his own statements to the media, his own posts on Twitter, or his writing on a new Substack newsletter he debuted last week. Instead, it protects him from government coercion.

Still, it’s generally good advice for a lawyer to tell a client to stop talking.

Mark Cohen, a former federal prosecutor and partner at the New York firm Cohen & Gresser, leads Bankman-Fried’s legal team. Cohen did not respond to an email about his client’s public antics, but Bankman-Fried told The New York Times in a live interview before his arrest that his lawyers instructed him to “recede into a hole.” His lawyers, he admitted, were not thrilled about his appearance at the event.

“That’s not who I am, and that’s not who I want to be,” he said. “I have a duty to talk and explain what happened.” – Source

Sam Bankman-Fried freed on $250M US bail as former execs co-operate in case against him

Sam Bankman-Fried will be released to his parents’ home while he awaits his trial on fraud charges after agreeing to a record-setting $250 million US bail.

Bankman-Fried has been accused of stealing billions of dollars in FTX customer funds to hide and offset losses at his hedge fund, Alameda Research, prior to the bankruptcy of both companies and others last month.

Bankman-Fried, 30, built his crypto empire in the Bahamas, where he has been living since his companies collapsed in November. But events moved swiftly this week after he was arrested by Bahamanian authorities, and then extradited to New York on Wednesday evening.

Bankman-Fried’s defence lawyer, Mark Cohen, argued that his client was happy to abide by any conditions if he is released prior to his trial. – Source
FTX: Collapsed crypto exchange says $415m was hacked

Collapsed cryptocurrency exchange FTX says that around $415m (£338m) of crypto has been stolen by hackers.

About $323m was hacked from its international exchange and $90m from its US platform since the firm filed for bankruptcy, FTX’s CEO says.

FTX co-founder Sam Bankman-Fried has been accused of stealing billions of dollars from FTX users to pay debts at his other firm, Alameda Research.

Mr Bankman-Fried has pleaded not guilty to fraud charges.

Last week the company told a bankruptcy judge in Delaware that it had recovered more than $5bn in assets.

On Tuesday FTX provided further details, saying that it had recovered $1.7bn in cash, $3.5bn in so-called liquid cryptocurrency and $300m in liquid securities. – Source

Sam Bankman-Fried was a spiteful and insecure boss who gaslit anyone that challenged him, FTX’s former US chief says

Sam Bankman-Fried was a spiteful and insecure manager who reacted badly to any conflict or criticism, according to a former top executive for FTX’s US-based operation.

Brett Harrison, who was the president of FTX US between May 2021 and September 2022, slammed the disgraced former crypto billionaire in a series of tweets Saturday.

Harrison said that his relationship with Bankman-Fried had started to sour after around six months – when he called for greater separation between FTX US and its Bahamas-based parent company.

“I began advocating strongly for establishing separation and independence for the executive, legal, and developer teams of FTX US, and Sam disagreed,” he said. “I saw in that early conflict his total insecurity and intransigence when his decisions were questioned, his spitefulness, and the volatility of his temperament.”

“I realized he wasn’t who I remembered,” Harrison added, referencing a previous stint working with Bankman-Fried at the quantitative trading firm Jane Street.

Bankman-Fried had been called “the next Warren Buffett” by Fortune magazine and courted high-profile investors like VC firm Sequoia Capital and NFL star Tom Brady – and that made him difficult to challenge, according to Harrison.

“There was tremendous pressure not to disagree with Sam, but I did so anyway,” he said. “At that time, and for all of my time at FTX US, his influence over the media, FTX’s partners, the venture capital industry, and the traditional finance industry was pervasive and unyielding.”

Harrison said that he flagged further concerns about FTX’s hiring policy, its lack of experienced managers in C-suite positions, and the software development roles held by Gary Wang and Nishad Singh – who’ve since been identified as key members of Bankman-Fried’s “inner circle”.

But Bankman-Fried was unable to deal with conflict and responded to the criticism by “gaslighting” Harrison, the former FTX US executive said.

“Sam was uncomfortable with conflict,” Harrison tweeted. “He responded at times with dysregulated hostility, at times with gaslighting and manipulation, but ultimately chose to isolate me from communication on key decision-making.” – Source