The U.S. attorney’s office has filed new charges against FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried.
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The founder of the crypto exchange, whose list of alleged atrocities is already not particularly small, was charged with committing fraudulent actions related to the use of securities and conspiracy to illegally appropriate funds in the banking sector. Representatives of the prosecutor’s office claim that Sam Bankman-Fried received billions of dollars from customer deposits. The FTX founder is currently facing 12 charges.
Initially, in December last year, Sam Bankman-Fried was convicted of alleged involvement in eight crimes in the financial sector. After that, he was extradited from his home in the Bahamas. The FTX founder denies the accusations and states that the content and purposefulness of his actions are not criminal.
The 39-page document released by the prosecutor’s office describes, through a detailed analysis, a series of publications on the accused’s Twitter page in November last year. These publications contained information that did not correspond to the real state of affairs and were posted after it became known about a hole in the balance of the cryptocurrency exchange.
Prosecutors also allege that Sam Bankman-Fried tried to influence American politicians by directing tens of millions of dollars to implement these efforts. These funds were transferred under the guise of transactions on behalf of other persons in order not to formally violate current US law. Also, such a transfer scheme was necessary to hide the source of the fiscal receipt.
Before the collapse of FTX, which occurred in November, Sam Bankman-Fried was the face of the cryptocurrency sphere and repeatedly spoke before influential Congressional committees. He actively supported the formation of a legislative framework in the United States to regulate processes in the crypto industry.
The new charges were brought after two colleagues of Sam Bankman-Fried, including the head of FTX Alameda trading subsidiary Caroline Ellison and FTX co-founder Gary Wang, pleaded guilty in criminal cases in December and agreed to cooperate with the prosecutor’s office. Perhaps the new charges were formulated based on their testimony.
Prosecutors claim that during the period when the collapse of FTX began, and it became obvious that this process was irreversible, the founder of the crypto exchange activated the implementation of fraudulent schemes. By deception, he forced existing and potential investors to provide additional financing, which amounted to billions of dollars.
In November, the founder of the crypto exchange sent out a falsely labeled balance sheet to investors. This was done to convince the victims that FTX has a resource to meet the withdrawal requirements. In fact, at that moment, the accused was trying to hide an $8 billion hole. Sam Bankman-Fried also came up with several ways to hide how FTX money was used for investments through Alameda.
The indictment states that the crypto exchange has never practiced storing customer funds in special accounts in the interests of safety and security and did not separate them from Alameda assets. Sam Bankman-Fried claims that these statements are not true.
The trial on the charges against the founder of the crypto exchange is scheduled for October 2023. Sam Bankman-Fried will spend the rest of his life in prison if the court admits to proving the criminal acts that the prosecutors say.
