Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder and former CEO of the bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange FTX, has been indicted on fraud charges by US authorities. The 30-year-old, also known as SBF, arrested in the Bahamas on Monday.
today, Unsealed grand jury indictment The US Department of Justice has released detailed criminal charges against Bankman-Fried. He is indicted on his eight counts of customer fraud, money laundering and campaign finance violations.
According to the indictment, Bankman-Fried and his associates “willfully” divert funds to “pay the costs and liabilities of Alameda Research,” Bankman-Fried’s private cryptocurrency fund, and plan to defraud customers. ‘ is said to have been invented.
Bankman-Fried was a major political donor who promised to contribute $1 billion in the 2022 US midterm elections, but he broke his promise. However, the Justice Department said he violated campaign finance laws and deliberately defrauded the Federal Election Commission by collecting donations through other people.
In addition, the Securities and Exchange Commission announced this morning that civil litigation Bankman-Fried said he had committed “years of massive fraud to misappropriate billions of dollars of trading platform customer funds for his own gain and help grow his crypto empire.” accused him of orchestrating
The SEC complaint seeks Bankman-Fried to pay damages to FTX customers and to pay additional fines to customers who engage in fraud. The SEC also seeks to bar entrepreneurs from serving as corporate directors or officers in the future.
The SEC said Bankman-Fried diverted the funds to his private investment fund, Alameda, telling customers their money is safe and that “Alameda is a completely separate entity from FTX.” guaranteed. “We knew or recklessly ignored these statements,” the SEC said.
The SEC said that once client funds are in Alameda, Bankman-Fried will lend them to himself and his management team. These loans were “poorly documented, and sometimes not documented at all,” but between March 2020 and September 2022, the SEC said he had his 13 He lent over a billion dollars and spent it on large political contributions and lavish possessions in the Bahamas. .
And even as his plans began to spiral out of control, the SEC said Bankman-Fried “continued to mislead investors and the public.” In early November, following public allegations that FTX was running out of funds, the founder of FTX said in a since-deleted tweet: Assets are fine,” and “FTX has enough to cover all of its client holdings.” I knew that.
The company eventually went bankrupt on November 11th, and Bankman-Fried stepped down as CEO of FTX. His fortune has gone from an estimated $16 billion to practically nothing.
Bankman-Fried continued to tweet about FTX after his retirement, gave interviews, and apologized for the company’s bankruptcy, but denied it was a scam. He was due to appear before Congress today and testify before the House Financial Services Committee.
SEC Chairman Gary Gensler said: “Sam Bankman-Fried claims he built a house of cards based on deception while telling investors it was one of the safest buildings in cryptocurrency. there are,” he said. statement“The alleged fraud committed by Bankman-Fried is a clear call to crypto platforms that they must comply with our laws,” he warned.
