Disgraced FTX founder faces “slew of new charges,” including more fraud and illegal political contributions

Could it get any worse? Authorities arrested FTX founder and CEO Sam Bankman-Fried final December, shortly after his crypto change imploded, taking all its traders to the proverbial financial institution. Prosecutors charged him with a number of counts of varied felonies, including wire fraud, wire fraud conspiracy, securities fraud, securities fraud conspiracy, and cash laundering, touchdown him in severe scorching water.

Even after he was in custody, investigators continued to look into different areas of Sam Bankman-Fried’s enterprise dealings. Those probes led to at the very least 12 further costs towards the cryptopreneur for wire, financial institution, and commodity fraud, further cash laundering costs, illegal political contributions, and “operating an unlicensed money transmitting business.” According to CNBC, the extra costs alone may tack on a long time of jail time if convicted.

Federal prosecutors unsealed the “superseding indictment” on Thursday, revealing even more mishandling and shady dealings involving SBF’s administration of FTX and his hedge fund Alameda Research. The doc notes that he used funds from each entities “to fund speculative investments, to make charitable contributions, and to enrich himself.”

While Bankman-Fried has all the time been publically open about his political contributions, a darkish underbelly to his exercise went unnoticed. Investigators declare that SBF made more than 300 illegal political donations reaching into the tens of tens of millions of {dollars}.

While most of his public donations went to Democrats, prosecutors declare that behind the scenes, SBF was working a “straw donor” rip-off to plant seeds of affect with each Democrats and Republicans, who would in the end be the regulators of the crypto business. Bankman-Fried allegedly carried out his straw donor scheme by “coercing” two unnamed FTX executives to make donations to specific political officers utilizing cash from FTX and Alameda and at SBF’s discretion.

“In total, the defendant and his co-conspirators made over 300 political contributions, totaling tens of millions of dollars, that were unlawful because they were made in the name of a straw donor or paid for with corporate funds. In dozens of instances, BANKMAN-FRIED’s use of straw donors allowed him to evade contribution limits on individual donations to candidates to whom he had already donated. To avoid certain contributions being publicly reported in his name, Bankman-Fried conspired to and did have certain political contributions made in the names of two other FTX executives.”

Investigators declare that SBF tried to maintain his Republican contributions “dark” and that he used the chat app Signal’s “Donation Processing” function, which autodeletes logs of transactions after use. Bankman-Fried and his co-conspirators moreover tried to cover their donations by logging “the outgoing wire transfers from Alameda to individuals’ bank accounts for purposes of making contributions as Alameda ‘loans’ or ‘expenses.'”

Perhaps probably the most evident crimson flag to his political shenanigans was Alemeda’s bookkeeping. The hedge fund recorded over $100 million in political contributions in its ledgers for the 2022 midterms. However, Federal Election Commission information present no donations from Alameda to candidates or political motion committees in 2022.

While no one mentions names, a bunch representing traders conned by SBF has reportedly despatched “confidential messages” to candidates, PACs, and others who obtained the illegal funds, asking them to return the cash to traders. It is unclear if these makes an attempt to gather some of the wasted cash are proving profitable.

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