- Sam Bankman-Fried was released on December 22 2022.
FTX founder Sam Bankman Fried and several other executives of crypto exchanges have received secret loans from investment and trading firm Alameda Research as per the statements of the former CEO of the firms.
Alameda Research’s former Chief Executive Officer Caroline Ellison noted that she agreed with Bankman-fried to hide from FTX investors, lenders and customers that hedge funds could borrow unlimited sums from the exchange,According to transcript of Caroline dated December 19 plea hearing that was unsealed on December 23.
According to the transcript Ellison told US district Judge Ronnie Abrams in Manhattan federal court that “We prepared certain quarterly balance sheets that concealed the extent of Alameda’s borrowing and the billions of dollars in loans that Alameda had made to FTX executives and to related parties.”
The co-founder of FTX Gary Wang and Ellison both pleaded guilty and are cooperating with prosecutors as part of their plea agreements their sworn statement offers a preview of how two top of Sam might testify at trial against him as prosecution witness.
According to ET in a separate plea on December 19 Gary Wang said that he was instructed to make changes to FTX code’s to give Alameda Special privileges on the trading platform. While being aware that others were telling investors and customers that Alameda had no such privileges.
Although it is not clear yet, Wang also did not justify who instructed him to do soo.
Nicolas Roos, a prosecutor said in the court statement on Thursday that the Bankman-Fried trial would include evidence from “multiple cooperating witnesses” Ross added Sam carried out a “fraud of epic proportions” that led to the loss of billions of life savings of customers and investor funds.
Sam Bankman-Fried was released on December 22 on a $250 million bond although the spokesperson did not respond to the comments of Ellison and Wang statements.
Ellison said that “I am truly sorry for what I did,” she further added that she is helping to recover users and investor lost funds.
Wang admitted that he knew that what is doing was wrong.
Charges on the FTX founder do not end here as they also stretched to securities and commodities fraud also. Each conspiracy for committing commodities and securities fraud could also make the former trader to witness five years in prison each. The efforts towards defrauding the government and committing violations of campaign finance would also include the same. All this, however, was still subjected to get proved and SBF needed to be convicted.
Source: https://www.thecoinrepublic.com/2022/12/24/ftx-executives-accused-of-receiving-hidden-loans/