Sam Bankman-Fried is in a lot of trouble. Damian Williams, U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, laid out the government’s case against the former FTX CEO at a press conference Tuesday afternoon, charging him with eight financial crimes and alleging he defrauded FTX’s customers and investors, as well as lenders to its sister trading firm Alameda, of billions of dollars. Williams alleged Bankman-Fried also violated federal campaign finance laws by funnelling stolen customer funds into tens of millions of dollars’ worth of political campaign contributions and covering up their source.
And that’s not all that happened to crypto’s former golden boy over the past 24 hours. Here’s what else you need to know:
- Bankman-Fried’s very bad day actually began in the Bahamas Monday evening, when local police arrested him at the request of the U.S. government.
- This morning, he appeared in court in the Bahamas.
- The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission also announced fraud charges against Bankman-Fried. “We allege that 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 release.
- The U.S. House Financial Services Committee was supposed to hear from Bankman-Fried today, but went ahead without him. “This is just plain old-fashioned embezzlement, taking money from others and using it for your own purposes. This is not sophisticated at all,” FTX’s new CEO John Ray III reportedly told the committee.
What to watch for next: “This investigation is very much ongoing, and it’s moving very quickly,” Williams said at the press conference, promising to continue to update the public. The U.S. government may have an extradition fight ahead of it, with Bankman-Fried declining to waive his right to an extradition hearing during his court appearance in the Bahamas. A lawyer for Bankman-Fried has reportedly issued a statement saying he is reviewing the charges and his legal options.