12 December 2022

Wicked!

Sam Bankman-Fried has been arrested in the Bahamas pending a US extradition order.

What took them so long?

Sam Bankman-Fried, the disgraced founder of the collapsed cryptocurrency exchange FTX, was arrested in the Bahamas on Monday after U.S. prosecutors filed criminal charges.

“S.B.F.’s arrest followed receipt of formal notification from the United States that it has filed criminal charges against S.B.F. and is likely to request his extradition,” the government of the Bahamas said in a statement.

The arrest was the latest stunning development in one of the most dramatic falls from grace in recent corporate history. Mr. Bankman-Fried, 30, was scheduled to testify in Congress on Tuesday about the collapse of FTX, which was one of the most powerful firms in the emerging crypto industry until it imploded virtually overnight last month after a run on deposits exposed an $8 billion hole in its accounts.

Prosecutors for the Southern District of New York confirmed that Mr. Bankman-Fried had been charged and said an indictment would be unsealed on Tuesday. Separately, the Securities and Exchange Commission said in a statement that it had authorized charges “relating to Mr. Bankman-Fried’s violations of our securities laws.”

The criminal charges against Mr. Bankman-Fried included wire fraud, wire fraud conspiracy, securities fraud, securities fraud conspiracy and money laundering, said a person with knowledge of the matter.

Rather ironically, it appears that senior people at FTX had a secret group chat called, "Wirefraud." (As Anna Russell would say, "I'm not making this up, you know.")

Members of the inner circle of power at collapsed cryptocurrency exchange FTX formed a chat group called “Wirefraud” and were using it to send secret information about operations in the lead up to the company’s spectacular failure.

On the eve of the first big hearing in the US Congress this week that will investigate FTX’s collapse, The Australian Financial Review has learnt that FTX founders Sam Bankman-Fried and Zixiao “Gary” Wang, along with FTX engineer Nishad Singh and former Alameda Research chief executive Caroline Ellison, used a chat group on Signal in the hope that the information would remain hidden.

………

The news that the leaders of the company had a chat group called “Wirefraud” heightens concerns about the prospect of wrongdoing by Mr Bankman-Fried and his colleagues.

Gee, you think?

Rule 1 of doing crime is, "Do not make statements about doing crime in any medium where you leave a permanent record.

It appears that rule 0 of doing crime should be, "Do no make your chat group name an admission of crime."

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