On Thursday, Sam Bankman-Fried, the creator of the now-defunct cryptocurrency exchange, was slammed with new criminal allegations (February 24). Bankman-fried is now charged with conspiring to make more than 300 unlawful political donations in the amended indictment. He is presently being held on 12 criminal counts. Four of them involve conspiracy and fraud.
Authorities have charged Bankman-Fried with stealing billions of dollars from FTX customers to cover losses at his crypto-focused hedge fund, Alameda Research. The fresh accusations put more pressure on former millionaire Bankman-Fried, two of whose top lieutenants have already entered guilty pleas.
As a result of his online behavior following his arrest, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan, who is in charge of the case, has shown a desire to remove Bankman-$250 Fried’s million bail package. Bankman-Fried is now attempting to avoid going to prison.
Bankman-Fried did not immediately respond with any comments.
According to the new accusation, Bankman-Fried and two former FTX executives planned to donate tens of millions of dollars to persuade lawmakers to support the corporation by passing legislation.
To circumvent contribution caps, Bankman-Fried, one of the biggest donors to Democrats in the 2022 midterm elections, made those illegal gifts using “straw” donors or corporate funds, according to the prosecution.
Reports show that Bankman-Fried intended to give at least $1 million to a super PAC supporting a US Senate candidate who supported LGBTQ+ issues in 2022. One of Bankman-political Fried’s consultants suggested using a straw contributor.
According to the indictment, the consultant informed the straw donor that, as the center-left face of our spending, she would be expected to give money to many “woke shit” organizations for transactional reasons.
Prosecutors claim that despite the donor’s discomfort, they agreed to donate since no one “trusted at FTX [who was] bi/gay in a position to contribute” was available.
The indictment also claims that some funds utilized to make these political donations came from Alameda bank accounts and included money that FTX customers had deposited.
Bankman-Fried and his accomplices hid their gifts by classifying them as “loans” or “expenses,” but according to the prosecution, there “were no defined interest rates, no interest payments, no collateral, and no evidence of payback.”
Bankman-Fried, formerly regarded as a bitcoin industry wunderkind, is now facing even more legal difficulties as a result of the latest accusations.
Authorities have raised suspicion that Bankman-Fried used the money from the customers’ stolen accounts to cover losses at his hedge fund, Alameda Research. Caroline Ellison, the former CEO of Alameda, and Gary Wang, a senior official at FTX, pleaded guilty to fraud-related charges and consented to assist the investigation.
The indictment claims that Bankman-Fried made those gifts through an FTX executive known only as CC-2 who, according to CNN, is Salame, to conceal the fact that they were Republican contributions. According to FEC reports, Salame gave more than $24 million to largely conservative candidates.
The prosecution claims that Singh was chosen to represent the left-leaning donations.
According to reports, Former FTX executive Nishad Singh was asked to donate by a political consultant who worked for Bankman-Fried, who reportedly said, “In general, you being the center-left face of our expenditure will involve you giving to a lot of woke sh*t for transactional purposes.”
Singh acknowledged his uneasiness, according to the new indictment, but concurred that no one “trusted at FTX [who was] bi/gay” was in a position to contribute.
Another time, the indictment claims, an FTX employee was instructed to wire $107,000 from Bankman-account Fried’s to the New York State Democratic Committee but was instructed to amend it to state that it was coming from CC-1. This occurred just before the 2022 midterm elections.
Singh donated $107,000 to the committee on October 2 according to New York state election records.
Ultimately, the executive rose to prominence as one of the biggest Democratic contributors to the 2022 midterm elections, advancing Bankman-goal Fried’s with contributions the executives wouldn’t have made of their own volition, according to the complaint.
The indictment claims that funds were moved from Alameda to the accounts of the FTX employees and subsequently disbursed as political donations to disguise the gifts.
Singh allegedly expressed anxiety to Bankman-Fried in chat chats in November 2022, when FTX was experiencing customer withdrawals, over “maybe 80m” in “donations/personal/etc” that passed through his bank account in his name. According to the indictment, the two discussed strategies for hiding the wire transfers but have yet to carry them out, making it impossible to further hide the campaign fundraising scam.
