In the months leading up to his federal charges on m money laundering and misuse of customer funds, FTX co-founder Sam Bankman-Fried has repeatedly refuted US charges that he misused $8 billion in client funds.
Sam Bankman-Fried refutes FBI accusations
Sam Bankman-Fried, has claimed that Binance CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhao orchestrated a months-long campaign to bring down FTX in a post on Substack on Thursday morning. He also refuted claims that he took billions of dollars in user cash.
Bankman-first Fried’s substantive answer to FBI accusations is that he orchestrated an $8 billion fraud that wiped out his $32 billion crypto empire.
Bankman-Fried was released on a $250 million recognizance bail earlier this month after entering a not-guilty plea to eight federal counts, including fraud and money laundering. Following his recent court hearing, the trial will begin in October this year to determine his fate.
Bankman-Fried put the value of Alameda’s net worth at $99 billion at the beginning of 2022. By October, he estimated that his hedge fund’s net assets had decreased to $10 billion. He blamed the market decline for the loss of value on his FTT token, comparing it to the likes of Tesla stock and Invesco QQQ, an ETF meant for tracking Nasdaq 100.
Bankman-Fried keeps to his story
FTX and Alameda are accused of being tools rather than fully genuine companies in Bankman-scam, Fried’s, according to regulators and prosecutors. The firms experienced large and puzzling liquidity shortages after FTX filed for bankruptcy in November, according to FTX’s restructuring executives.
Regulators built the case against Bankman-Fried with the help of his ex-executives like Zixiao Gary Wang, and Caroline Ellison and who both accepted plea deals against fraud charges. Bankman-post Fried’s did not disclose their assistance with federal investigations.
Bankman-Fried also mentioned in his post that other crypto companies have been “blown up.” He did not mention the purported harm that the failure of FTX is said to have caused to three of those companies: BlockFi, Genesis, and Gemini.
He had also stated several of his claims, including that FTX US was still solvent and that Alameda’s liquidity crisis was not the result of wrongdoing but rather a general market instability. He continued to state that FTX International and Alameda were 100 percent honest, successful companies.
The former FTX CEO Nov. 6 also cited Binance’s Zhao’s post as the climax of a “very effective months-long PR effort against FTX.” Zhao refuted these allegations by tweeting that “FTX destroyed themselves because they plundered billions of dollars.” Bankman-Fried expanded after the piece. All of which is to say, the 30-year-old wrote, “No monies were stolen.”
All these comments feel like a wild ride, considering how he has been hiding secrets over the operation of his crypto empire.
