United States prosecutors have seized approximately $700 million well worth of assets both owned by collapsed crypto exchange FTX or tied to founder and former CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, authorities disclosed in a Friday court docket submitting.
Federal authorities in the Southern District of New York have seized just above $698 million truly worth of property connected to the disgraced crypto founder, in accordance to the submitting, which was very first documented on by CNBC.
The bulk of the benefit arrives from a stack of shares that Bankman-Fried acquired in Robinhood, the stock and crypto investing application, allegedly utilizing stolen FTX buyer money.
The document submitted by U.S. Attorney Damian Williams specifics the holdings, with approximately 55.3 million shares of Robinhood stock seized on January 4. As of this writing, the shares are collectively worth about $526 million. They ended up held by Emergent Fidelity Technologies, a shell organization that Bankman-Fried produced with FTX co-founder Gary Wang.
In a December affidavit, Bankman-Fried wrote that he and Wang formed the new company—using resources loaned by FTX sister business Alameda Research—to receive shares in Robinhood Marketplaces Inc. totaling $546.4 million. FTX customer funds had been reportedly applied to plug a investing hole in Alameda’s harmony sheet past summer months, in advance of the exchange’s eventual collapse.
Other resources seized on January 4 involve $20.7 million held by Emergent at ED&F Guy Capital Markets, Inc, and one more $49.9 million at Farmington State Financial institution, held beneath FTX Electronic Marketplaces. Involving January 11 and 19, authorities seized just more than $100 million of FTX’s money held in Silvergate Lender.
Today’s court docket filings also checklist 3 accounts held at rival cryptocurrency trade Binance and its Binance US affiliate. Nonetheless, the worth of the property in individuals accounts was not specified.
FTX and Alameda submitted for Chapter 11 personal bankruptcy in November adhering to a liquidity disaster at FTX, with billions of dollars seemingly lacking from the as soon as-common crypto exchange. Bankman-Fried now faces a variety of prices from the U.S. Office of Justice, Securities and Trade Commission (SEC), and Commodity Futures Buying and selling Fee (CFTC) connected to his steps at the companies.
The FTX restructuring staff, led by new enterprise CEO John J. Ray III, reported last 7 days that it has separately recovered extra than $5 billion worth of corporation belongings concerning cryptocurrency, dollars, and liquid investments in securities.