SBF’s inner circle received $3.2B, mainly from Alameda: Court filings

March 16, 2023 Coin Telegraph

Alameda

Billions worth of loans and payments flowed from FTX entities to Sam Bankman-Fried and five other former executives of FTX and Alameda Research.

FTX and Alameda Research's former top brass received $3.2 billion in payments and loans from FTX-linked entities, according to the FTX administrators handling the firm's restructuring.

FTX, now helmed by CEO John Ray III, has been tracking missing funds from the exchange since its collapse, which it estimates to be $8.9 billion in total.

According to a March 15 statement from FTX Debtors, financial statements it filed in the Delaware Bankruptcy Court point to billions of dollars worth of loans and payments that allegedly flowed to Sam Bankman-Fried and high-ranking executives, which came mainly from trading house Alameda Research.

Sharing the FTX Debtors’ press release just issued: https://t.co/r7PlneGSXF
— FTX (@FTX_Official) March 16, 2023

Bankman-Fried however reportedly received the lion’s share of the funds at $2.2 billion.

Others named in the list include former FTX director Nishad Singh, FTX co-founder Gary Wang, and former CEO of Alameda Research Caroline Ellison, among others.

It provided a rough breakdown of the payments made to the FTX executives, as follows:

$2.2 billion to Sam Bankman-Fried
$587 million to Nishad Singh — former FTX director of engineering
$246 million to Zixiao "Gary" Wang — FTX cofounder
$87 million to Ryan Salame — former co-CEO, FTX Digital Markets (FTX’s Bahamian entity)
$25 million to John Samuel Trabucco — former co-CEO, Alameda
$6 million to Caroline Ellison — former CEO, Alameda

The amounts exclude over $240 million used for various purchases, such as luxury properties in the Bahamas, donations to political and charitable causes and “substantial transfers” to non-FTX subsidiaries, it noted.

FTX’s management said it is currently investigating its rights to pursue potential action against the recipients, along with their subsequent transferees, and that ongoing efforts are “expected to result in the further identification of assets, liabilities and transfers.”

It added it’s looking at ways to claw back the funds from the former executives but said the “amount and timing of eventual monetary recoveries cannot be predicted at this time.”

Bankman-Fried is facing 12 charges relating to conspiracy, wire and securities fraud in connection to the alleged mishandling of funds at FTX and its affiliates. He previously plead not guilty to eight similar original charges.

Ellison, Wang and Singh have pleaded guilty to charges similar to those brought against Bankman-Fried and are cooperating with investigations spearheaded by federal prosecutors.

The first known instance of an executive from FTX or Alameda assisting authorities came as Salame blew the whistle to Bahamian regulators of the potential fraud being perpetrated at FTX which lead them to shutter the exchange just two days later on Nov. 11.

Disgraced FTX Co-Founder Accused of Moving $684K in Crypto Assets While Under House Arrest

December 30, 2022 Bitcoin.com

FTX hires forensics team to find lost customers’ billions: Report

December 8, 2022 Coin Telegraph

Alameda Research

Lawyers have claimed FTX assets are either stolen or missing and now a team of financial forensic experts is attempting to trace the money trail.

The new management for bankrupt crypto exchange FTX has reportedly hired a team of financial forensic investigators to track down the billions of dollars worth of missing customer crypto.

Financial advisory company AlixPartners was chosen for the task and is led by former Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) chief accountant, Matt Jacques, according to a Dec. 7 report from the Wall Street Journal.

It is understood that the forensics firm will be tasked with conducting “asset-tracing” to identify and recover the missing digital assets and will complement the restructing work being undertaken by FTX.

On Nov. 11 hackers drained wallets owned by FTX and FTX.US of over $450 million worth of assets.

Former CEO Sam Bankman-Fried claimed in an interview recorded on Nov. 16 with crypto blogger Tiffany Fong that he was close to finding who the hacker was and that he had “narrowed it down to eight people” believing it was “either an ex-employee or somewhere someone installed malware on an ex-employee’s computer.”

On Nov. 22, a lawyer representing FTX debtors stated that “a substantial amount of assets have either been stolen or are missing” from FTX, and revealed at the time that blockchain analytics firms such as Chainalysis had been enlisted to help as part of the proceedings.

The stolen funds from FTX have since been on the move through various crypto mixers and exchanges to launder the funds.

The hacker transferred their Ether (ETH) holdings on Nov. 20 to a new wallet address and swapped some of the ETH for an ERC-20 version of Bitcoin (BTC) afterward bridging the funds to the BTC Network.

They then used a laundering technique called peel chaining that subdivides the holdings into increasingly smaller amounts across multiple wallets and sent the BTC through a crypto mixer then to the OKX exchange on Nov. 29.

The hacker also attempted more peel chaining by splitting 180,000 ETH across 12 newly created wallets on Nov. 21.

Former CEO Sam Bankman-Fried has also previously claimed to have “unknowingly commingled” customer funds at FTX and its sister trading firm Alameda Research with customer funds at FTX loaned to Alameda.

FTX’s new CEO and chief restructuring officer, John Ray III, was scalding in his initial bankruptcy filing saying that “never” in his 40-year career had he “seen such a complete failure of corporate controls.”

He claimed Bankman-Fried and his closest colleagues are “potentially compromised” and used “software to conceal the misuse of customer funds.”

ftx funds