Sam Bankman Friedthe disgraced founder and former CEO of the cryptocurrency exchange FTX, was arrested Monday in the Bahamas and taken into custody on multiple criminal charges, including wire fraud, conspiracy and money laundering, the New York Times His indictment was officially unsealed on Tuesday, revealing another notable charge: campaign finance violations. receives the Federal Election Commission.
Tuesday was a day of reckoning for SBF, whose multi-billion dollar crypto empire collapsed in a matter of days last month. investors in FTX… orchestrating a massive, years-long fraud, diverting billions of dollars of the trading platform’s client funds for his own personal gain and to grow his crypto empire. private hedge fund, Alameda Research, “from the beginning of FTX… and he continued to do so until the collapse of FTX in November 2022.” SBF, in what the SEC called “parallel actions.”
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Bankman-Fried, who is expected to be extradited to the US, was arrested a day before he was to testify (remotely) before Congress about the collapse of FTX. Reuters obtained a draft copy of SBF’s scheduled remarks, which contained a mea culpa. I’d like to start by saying formally, under oath: I screwed up” – and a claim that his former lawyers pressured him to step down as CEO and replace himself with John J Raya specialist in the field of business clearance. Testing Tuesday before the House committee as scheduled, Ray told them that the financial problems at FTX started “months or years” ago, not “overnight,” according to the TimeRepresentative Maxine Waterswho oversees the commission said she was “surprised” by SBF’s arrest on Monday and expressed disappointment. “The public has been eagerly awaiting these answers under oath before Congress, and the timing of this arrest denies the public this opportunity,” said Waters.
Still, SBF has hardly been shy about his spectacular demise. He has given interviews to dozens of outlets, such as the TimeVox, fortune– and even showed up (virtually) for the DealBook Summit. SBF’s openness with the press is in line with the honest and affable image it has subtly built up over the years by letting journalists work to its advantage. But his media strategy already appears to be backfiring, with the SEC quoting several of his tweets in its Tuesday filing: “The defense will be completely boxed in by the previous statements SBF has made and the very probing questions he has asked in the press and on social media,” said criminal lawyer and former federal prosecutor Renato Mariotti told Reuters.
