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'Old-fashioned embezzlement' Where did all FTX's money go under Bankman-Fried?
The Guardian
|March 28, 2024
Sam Bankman-Fried, the former CEO of the bankrupt cryptocurrency FTX, presided exchange over a spectacular collapse that cost his customers billions of dollars.
He argues in court filings that anyone owed money by FTX "will eventually be paid in full". The US government says he's living in a fantasy land.
Last week, FTX's caretaker John Ray III, appointed to oversee the company's bankruptcy proceedings, reminded the court that his predecessor had masterminded a "colossal fraud”, lived a "life of delusion", and called Bankman-Fried's lawyers' claim that no one had been harmed "categorically, callously and demonstrably false".
Bankman-Fried faces sentencing today after being convicted of fraud and conspiracy to launder money in the multibillion-dollar collapse of his cryptocurrency exchange.
If given the maximum penalty, he would face 100 years in prison. His lawyers have asked for a six-year sentence. The US government wants to see the 32-year-old ex-CEO, who defrauded his own customers out of $8bn (£6.3bn), sentenced to 40 to 50 years.
As he awaits sentencing, key questions still remain: what happened to all the money from a business that was valued at its peak at $32bn and what, if anything, can creditors expect to get back?
FTX: new technology, oldfashioned embezzlement
The crypto entrepreneur laid a smokescreen, spending millions of customer funds on his lifestyle, drawing in politicians and celebrities with donations and endorsement deals, and fronting a pseudo-philosophy of "effective altruism" that boiled down to the greater the profits, the greater the good.
This story is from the March 28, 2024 edition of The Guardian.
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