Crime

Sam Bankman-Fried claims he’s victim of anti-Semitism and that his failed crypto exchange is SOLVENT and can cover $1.8B losses

Bankman-Fried was due to give testimony today about his doomed platform before the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Financial Services.

Forbes obtained a written copy of the testimony he was expected to give.

It began: ‘I would like to start by formally stating under oath: I f****d up. I know that it doesn’t mean much to say that I’m sorry. And so I’m dedicating as much of myself as I can to do the right thing by customers.

‘When all is said and done, I’ll judge myself primarily by one metric: whether I have eventually been able to make customers whole. If I fail our customers in this regard, I have failed myself.’

But over the next 18 pages, he blamed anti-Semitism, lawyers and even his own ex-girlfriend for the breakdown of his company. 

They were one part of a “Chinese harem polyamory” group set up in the Bahamas that mixed sex, pills and crypto. Now Sam Bankman-Fried and Caroline Ellison, the two executives at the center of the collapse of cryptocurrency firm FTX, appear to be turning on each other.

After Bankman-Fried suggested she might be to blame for a missing $8 billion in customer money, Ellison could be signaling she’s willing to flip on her old boyfriend with the hiring of the law firm Wilmer Hale.

Top white-collar attorneys point out that Wilmer Hale is among the most politically connected white-collar law firms in the country. It has a reputation for cutting deals with the Manhattan US Attorney’s office, itself the country’s premier prosecutor of business-related crimes.

She’s rollin.

Joseph Bankman and Barbara Fried, both professors at Stanford Law, have remained in the Bahamas with their son since his firm’s collapse

Sam Bankman-Fried, founder of the collapsed exchange FTX, always stood apart from other cryptocurrency entrepreneurs, and it wasn’t for his baggy shorts or taste in videogames.

Both his parents, as Mr. Bankman-Fried would note in meetings with Washington policy makers, are professors at Stanford Law School. Their reputations were a credential to their son as he grew his crypto empire, even to those inclined to see little value in the industry.

Well connected criminals.

Disgraced crypto king Sam Bankman-Fried was arrested by authorities in the Bahamas Monday night after criminal charges were filed in the US.

The 30-year-old was taken into custody after the Bahamian government received formal notification from the US of the charges against him, the Office of Attorney General in the Bahamas said.

Damian Williams, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, confirmed Bankman-Fried’s arrest, but would not elaborate on what the charges were.

Did Ellison roll over?

US prosecutors are reportedly assembling a potential fraud indictment against disgraced crypto mogul Sam Bankman-Fried — and speculation is growing that his ex-girlfriend Caroline Ellison could become a stool pigeon in the case.

Justice Department officials in the Southern District of New York are reportedly scrutinizing the alleged transfer of hundreds of millions of dollars from the US to the Bahamas right around the time that his FTX cryptocurrency exchange filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, according to Bloomberg News.

Federal prosecutors in Manhattan also are probing whether Bankman-Fried manipulated crypto markets by orchestrating trades that led to the collapse of the TerraUSD cryptocurrency earlier this year, according to previous reports.

At an exclusive party in the Bahamas last spring, FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried was perched atop a patio railing, mingling with pop star Katy Perry and actor Orlando Bloom. FTX was one of the hottest cryptocurrency exchanges of the moment, and Bankman-Fried was surrounded by people vying for attention.

Across the patio, keeping to herself, was one of Bankman-Fried’s key lieutenants, Caroline Ellison, who ran the crypto trading firm he founded, Alameda Research. She didn’t appear fazed by the celebrities, and party-goer David Micley found it easy enough to strike up a conversation with her.

“She didn’t seem like a person that took herself too seriously or thought of herself as too important,” said Micley, who works in the crypto industry and described the party scene to the Globe.

She may be playing this smarter than Sammy.