by Mike Adams, Natural News:
FTX founder and serial liar Sam Bankman-Fried has been arrested by Bahamian authorities under a joint operation with the Southern District of New York (SDNY) U.S. District Court in Manhattan which has leveled multiple criminal charges against Bankman-Fried. He is expected to be extradited quickly to face prosecution in the United States.
Those charges were unsealed today and reveal that SBF is facing wire fraud, securities fraud, money laundering and campaign finance violations, reports CNBC: (emphasis ours)
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Prosecutors allege in the indictment that the former billionaire was engaging in criminal activity that began as far back as 2019 and continued through last month.
Bankman-Fried deliberately and knowingly “agreed with others to defraud customers of FTX.com by misappropriating those customers’ deposits and using those deposits to pay expenses and debts of Alameda Research,” the indictment alleges.
It also accuses Bankman-Fried of conspiring with others to defraud FTX’s lenders “by providing false and misleading information to those lenders regarding Alameda Research’s financial condition.”
Prosecutors also allege he conspired with others to make illegal donations to political candidates, using the names of other persons to mask and augment political giving.
SBF was the second largest individual donor to Democrats in the 2022 campaign, right behind George Soros. The bankruptcy of FTX and the criminal charges now leveled have shut down a slush fund money operation that primarily benefited Democrats and was instrumental in funding the campaigns of Katie Hobbs, John Fetterman and others. (GOP Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, meanwhile, withdrew funding from Blake Masters in Arizona, in an apparent effort to de-fund all “America First” candidates.)
SEC files criminal charges against Sam Bankman-Fried for defrauding investors
In addition to the criminal charges leveled by the SDNY, the SEC has charged SBF with multiple securities violations. According to the SEC.gov press release: (emphasis ours)
The Securities and Exchange Commission today charged Samuel Bankman-Fried with orchestrating a scheme to defraud equity investors in FTX Trading Ltd. (FTX), the crypto trading platform of which he was the CEO and co-founder.
According to the SEC’s complaint, since at least May 2019, FTX, based in The Bahamas, raised more than $1.8 billion from equity investors, including approximately $1.1 billion from approximately 90 U.S.-based investors.
The complaint alleges that, in reality, Bankman-Fried orchestrated a years-long fraud to conceal from FTX’s investors (1) the undisclosed diversion of FTX customers’ funds to Alameda Research LLC, his privately-held crypto hedge fund; (2) the undisclosed special treatment afforded to Alameda on the FTX platform, including providing Alameda with a virtually unlimited “line of credit” funded by the platform’s customers and exempting Alameda from certain key FTX risk mitigation measures; and (3) undisclosed risk stemming from FTX’s exposure to Alameda’s significant holdings of overvalued, illiquid assets such as FTX-affiliated tokens. The complaint further alleges that Bankman-Fried used commingled FTX customers’ funds at Alameda to make undisclosed venture investments, lavish real estate purchases, and large political donations.
Just two months ago, Sam Bankman-Fried was celebrated by the corporate media as a genius, revolutionary figure in finance. He was dubbed the “JP Morgan” of crypto by hosts on CNBC, for example, and over a dozen venture capital firms couldn’t stop gushing over his supposed brilliance, which was apparently indicated by his inability to speak in complete sentences without peppering them with the word, “like.” As in, like, because, you know, like, it was like, never co-mingling, like, customer funds.
To those of us over the age of 30, this speech pattern is only indicative of being a woke idiot. But to woke idiots, it’s a dog whistle for blind obedience and conformity. They are attracted to it like slobbering dogs.
The CFTC also sues FTX founder over fraud
As CoinDesk is now reporting, the CFTC (Commodity Futures Trading Commission) is also suing SBF over allegations that he made “misleading statements” about FTX which caused a “significant price impact” on bitcoin and ether, among other crypto coins. As CoinDesk reports:
“The use of customer funds by Alameda was not authorized by FTX customers, and FTX customers were not made aware that their funds were being used by Alameda,” the filing said, adding that this contradicts both best practices for derivatives exchanges and contractual terms of service.
From the CFTC official press release:
The complaint charges all three defendants with fraud and material misrepresentations in connection with the sale of digital commodities in interstate commerce. Further, the complaint asserts that defendants’ actions caused the loss of over $8 billion in FTX customer deposits.
The complaint alleges that from at least May 2019 through November 11, 2022, Bankman-Fried controlled both FTX.com, a centralized digital asset derivative platform, and Alameda, a digital asset trading firm that operated as a primary market maker on FTX.
In other words, SBF is facing a whirlwind of both criminal and civil penalties, fines, sanctions and very likely prison time if convicted.
Crypto auditors exposed as total junk
Anther big takeaway from today’s events is that crypto auditors appear to be nothing more than rubber stamp firms that fail to conduct serious investigations into the cash and asset flows of crypto companies. As The Gateway Pundit reports:
The auditors of FTX appear to have some serious problems. National accounting firms Armanino and Prager Metis failed to document the FTX multi-billion loans to Alameda in the audited financial statements. They also missed related party transactions with FTX Executives. Massive audit failure.
When the house of cards was collapsing, key players at FTX took out personal loans. Sam Bankman-Fried received a whopping $1.3 billion loan, and other executives received over half a billion dollars in loans. Investigators do not yet know where this money went, and the indictment does not mention how much money was funneled to corrupt politicians as part of the election slush fund / racketeering operations.
