FTX’s Sam Bankman-Fried Charged With Criminal Fraud, Conspiracy
The charges are the latest twist in a saga that has rattled the world of cryptocurrencies
5 min
U.S. prosecutors on Tuesday charged FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried with eight counts of fraud and conspiracy, in what they called a scheme to defraud his crypto exchange’s customers and his hedge fund’s lenders.
An indictment by the U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York, unsealed Tuesday morning, accuses him of misappropriating FTX.com customers’ deposits and using those to pay expenses and debts of Alameda Research, his crypto hedge fund. Mr. Bankman-Fried is charged as well with defrauding the U.S. and violating campaign finance rules for conspiring with others to make illegal political contributions.
The FTX collapse is “one of the biggest financial frauds in American history,” said Damian Williams, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, at a press conference Tuesday afternoon.
Separately, John J. Ray III, the new chief executive of FTX, said at a congressional hearing Tuesday that FTX has incurred losses “in excess of $7 billion.” Mr. Ray, who oversaw the Enron Corp. bankruptcy in the early 2000s, said funds were taken from FTX and misused by affiliated trading firm Alameda Research, which incurred trading losses.
Mr. Ray described Enron as having been brought down by sophisticated people whose machinations aimed to keep transactions secret. FTX, by contrast, presents as “old-fashioned embezzlement,” Mr. Ray said. “It’s taking money from customers and using it for your own purpose.”
Also Tuesday, the Securities and Exchange Commission alleged in a civil lawsuit that Mr. Bankman-Fried diverted customer funds from the start of FTX to support Alameda and to make venture investments, real-estate purchases and political donations. Another U.S. markets regulator, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, filed a separate lawsuit Tuesday linking his alleged fraudulent conduct at Alameda and FTX to markets that the CFTC regulates.
“Sam Bankman-Fried built a house of cards on a foundation of deception while telling investors that it was one of the safest buildings in crypto,” SEC Chair Gary Gensler said in a statement.
The charges are the latest twist in a saga that has rattled the world of cryptocurrencies, a largely unregulated market that boomed during the pandemic stimulus period but has been hammered this year by rising interest rates and the failure of several significant industry players.
FTX, one of the largest crypto exchanges in the world, filed for bankruptcy last month after the firm ran out of cash and a hastily arranged merger with rival Binance collapsed. The firm’s failure marked a sudden fall from grace for Mr. Bankman-Fried, who had sought to portray himself as the right-minded champion of an industry made up largely of outsiders.
In interviews since the filing, Mr. Bankman-Fried has said he bore responsibility for FTX’s collapse but denied he committed any fraud. Mark Cohen, a lawyer for Mr. Bankman-Fried, said in a statement Tuesday that his client “is reviewing the charges with his legal team and considering all of his legal options.”
Mr. Bankman-Fried, 30 years old, was arrested Monday in the Bahamas. He is expected to appear in a magistrate court on Tuesday in Nassau. A U.S. court official said that while the case had been assigned to a federal judge in Manhattan, there was no timing yet for Mr. Bankman-Fried’s extradition.
Prosecutors allege that from 2019 through November 2022, Mr. Bankman-Fried conspired with unnamed individuals to defraud both customers and lenders. He provided false and misleading information to lenders about Alameda Research’s financial condition, the indictment says.
While the 14-page indictment was light on detailed allegations, it says that on Sept. 18, 2022, Mr. Bankman-Fried caused an email to be sent to an FTX investor in New York that contained false information about FTX’s financial condition. In June 2022, the indictment says, Mr. Bankman-Fried and others misappropriated FTX.com customer deposits to satisfy Alameda Research’s loan obligations.
Mr. Bankman-Fried is also accused of defrauding the Federal Election Commission starting in 2020 by conspiring with others to illegally make contributions to candidates and political committees in the names of other people.
He and his associates contributed more than $70 million to election campaigns in recent years, The Wall Street Journal previously reported. He personally made $40 million in donations ahead of the 2022 midterm elections, most of which went to Democrats and liberal-leaning groups.
Mr. Ray, the FTX CEO, also said FTX is probing whether any loans taken by FTX executives were improperly used for campaign contributions.
However, Mr. Ray noted that tracing fund flows from FTX to executives and third parties was difficult given the lack of a paper trail for many corporate transactions at FTX.
“We’re dealing with a paperless bankruptcy,” he said. “It makes it very difficult to trace and track assets.”
The CFTC’s complaint contains a detailed discussion of events at Alameda and FTX and argues that the agency, generally less visible to the public than the SEC, also has jurisdiction over the case. The CFTC regulates U.S. derivatives markets, but it can go after fraud that affects certain commodity markets.
Besides giving Alameda access to its customer deposits, FTX granted the crypto hedge fund controlled by Mr. Bankman-Fried a series of trading-execution privileges that provided it an edge against other traders on the platform, the CFTC lawsuit alleges.
The CFTC said while institutional customers had their orders routed through the FTX system, Alameda was able “to bypass certain portions of the system and gain faster access.” It resulted in transaction orders being received several milliseconds faster than of other institutional clients.
The lawsuit also alleges Alameda wasn’t subject to certain automated verification processes, including on whether it had available funds before executing a transaction, giving it further advantage on the speed of its trades.
Tuesday’s congressional hearing was the first public appearance for Mr. Ray on FTX’s bankruptcy. Mr. Bankman-Fried had been scheduled to appear virtually at the same hearing, before he was arrested in the Bahamas at the request of the U.S. government. Bahamian police have said they would keep him in custody and they are awaiting an extradition order from U.S. authorities.
“The operation of Alameda really depended, based on the way it was operated, on the use of customer funds,” Mr. Ray said, responding to questions from members of Congress at the hearing. “There were virtually no internal controls…whatsoever.”
He also described numerous loans totaling billions of dollars taken out by Mr. Bankman-Fried, the former leader of FTX, from Alameda Research.
“We have no information at this time as to what purpose or use of those funds were,” Mr. Ray added. He said Mr. Bankman-Fried had signed as the issuer and recipient for some of the loans.
Mr. Ray also pushed back against recent statements made by Mr. Bankman-Fried that he had little to no involvement in the management of Alameda after passing control of the company to Caroline Ellison and Sam Trabucco, as well as Mr. Bankman-Fried’s statements that customer funds were passed to Alameda because of an accounting error.
“I don’t find those statements to be credible,” Mr. Ray said.
The arrest of Mr. Bankman-Fried is the latest case to highlight prosecutors’ push to bring white-collar cases to justice faster.
Deputy U.S. Attorney General Lisa Monaco said in a September speech that making prosecutors and companies feel that they were “on the clock” in these cases was a key priority for the department.
“We need to do more and move faster,” she said. “In individual prosecutions, speed is of the essence.”
Former federal prosecutors say that high-profile financial cases with lots of victims can increase the pressure on authorities to bring cases more quickly.
“Appearances matter when it comes to criminal justice,” said Mark Chutkow, a former federal prosecutor who is currently head of government investigations and corporate compliance at Dykema Gossett PLLC.
If Mr. Bankman-Fried remains in the Bahamas while the details of his potential extradition to the U.S. are worked out, there’s only one prison there: the Bahamas Department of Correctional Services, commonly known as Fox Hill Prison.
Prison inmates reported removing human waste by buckets and developing bed sores from lying on the bare ground, according to a 2021 human rights report on the Bahamas by the U.S. State Department. Cells were also infested with rats, maggots and insects, the report said.
Inmates are supposed to get an hour every day outside for exercise. Due to staff shortages and overcrowding, there are times when inmates will only get 30 minutes a week, said Romona Farquharson, an attorney in the Bahamas.
The prison has different sections that separate those serving terms for violent crimes, for instance, from those who aren’t. But due to overcrowding, there have been instances where inmates awaiting trial for minor crimes have been sent to the maximum security facility, said Ms. Farquharson.
“I think they’ve got to be careful not to have him in really rough areas in the prison,” she said.
—Angel Au-Yeung and Ben Foldy contributed to this article.
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As tariffs bite, Sydney’s MAISON de SABRÉ is pushing deeper into the US, holding firm on pricing and proving that resilience in luxury means more than survival.
Early indications from several big regional real-estate boards suggest March was overall another down month.
The government in Switzerland has waived residency requirements in a handful of locations, including one that’s growing fast.
3 min
While golden visa schemes proliferate, Switzerland remains famously protective about buying property in the country.
Rules known as Lex Koller, introduced in 1983, prohibit foreigners from buying homes in cities like Geneva and Zurich. And in the few locations where foreigners can buy, purchase permits come with rules around size and occupancy.
But non-Swiss buyers who have coveted an Alpine home now have a pathway to ownership, and it’s likely to come with financial upside. The Swiss government has waived residency requirements in a handful of locations where developers have negotiated exemptions in exchange for billions of dollars of investment in construction and improvements.
Andermatt, a village 4,715 feet above sea level in the centre of the Swiss Alps, is the largest municipality to open up to foreign buyers.
Its main investor, Egyptian magnate Samih Sawiris, “believed Andermatt could become a full-town redevelopment when he first visited in 2005, but the key was to offer real estate to people outside of Switzerland,” said Russell Collins, chief commercial officer of Andermatt-Swiss Alps, Sawiris’s development company.
“We became the only large-scale real estate development in Switzerland with an exemption from the Lex Koller regulations.”
In the ensuing decades, Andermatt has become a major draw for high-net-worth buyers from around the world, said Alex Koch de Gooreynd, a partner at Knight Frank in London and head of its Swiss residential sales team.
“What the Andermatt-Swiss Alps guys have done is incredible,” he said. “It’s an impressive resort, and there is still a good 10 years’ worth of construction to come. The future of the resort is very good.”
Andermatt’s profile got another boost from the 2022 acquisition of its ski and resort operations by Vail Resorts, which runs 41 ski destinations worldwide.
“Vail has committed to 150 million Swiss francs (US$175 million) in investments, which is another game-changer,” de Gooreynd said.
“If you’d asked me about Andermatt 10 years ago, I would have said the ski areas weren’t good enough of a draw.”
Along with the five-star Chedi Andermatt hotel and residences, which opened in 2013, residential offerings include the Gotthard Residences at the Radisson Blu hotel; at least six branded residences are planned to open by 2030, according to Jeremy Rollason, director for France, Switzerland, and Austria at Savills Ski.
“Most of these are niche, boutique buildings with anywhere from eight to 14 units, and they’re releasing them selectively to create interest and demand, which has been a very successful approach,” he said.
“Andermatt is an emerging destination, and an intelligent buy. Many buyers haven’t heard of it, but it’s about building a brand to the level of Verbier, Courchevel or Gstaad.”
The Alpinist, Andermatt’s third hotel residence, is slated to open in 2027; with 164 apartments, the five-star project will be run by Andermatt-Swiss Alps, according to Collins.
Other developments include Tova, an 18-unit project designed by Norwegian architects Snohetta, and La Foret, an 18-apartment building conceived by Swiss architects Brandenberger Kloter.
Prices in Andermatt’s new buildings range from around 1.35 million francs for a one-bedroom apartment to as much as 3.5 million francs for a two-bedroom unit, according to Astrid Josuran, an agent with Zurich Sotheby’s International Realty.
Penthouses with four or more bedrooms average 5 million-6 million francs. “Property values have been increasing steadily, with an average annual growth rate of 7.7% in the last 10 years,” she said.
“New developments will continue for the next 10 years, after which supply will be limited.”
Foreign buyers can obtain mortgages from Swiss banks, where current rates hover around 1.5% “and are declining,” Josuran said.
Compared to other countries with Alpine resorts, Switzerland also offers tax advantages, said Rollason of Savills. “France has a wealth tax on property wealth, which can become quite penal if you own $4 million or $5 million worth of property,” he said.
Andermatt’s high-end lifestyle has enhanced its appeal, said Collins of Andermatt-Swiss Alps.
“We have three Michelin-starred restaurants, and we want to create a culinary hub here,” he said. “We’ve redeveloped the main shopping promenade, Furkagasse, with 20 new retail and culinary outlets.
And there is a unique international community developing. While half our owners are Swiss, we have British, Italian and German buyers, and we are seeing inquiries from the U.S.”
But Andermatt is not the only Swiss location to cut red tape for foreign buyers.
The much smaller Samnaun resort, between Davos and Innsbruck, Austria, “is zoned so we can sell to foreigners,” said Thomas Joyce of Alpine property specialist Pure International.
“It’s high-altitude, with good restaurants and offers low property taxes of the Graubunden canton where it’s located.”
At the Edge, a new 22-apartment project by a Dutch developer, prices range from 12,000-13,500 francs per square metre, he said.
As Andermatt’s stature grows, this is a strategic time for foreigners to invest, said Josuran of Sotheby’s.
“It might be under the radar now, but it’s rapidly growing, and already among Switzerland’s most attractive ski locations,” she said. “Now’s the time to buy, before it reaches the status of a St. Moritz or Zermatt.”
The Mayfair home, listed for £8.25 million, once belonged to the Earls of Lindsay.
Early indications from several big regional real-estate boards suggest March was overall another down month.
