FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried's spectacular rise and fall in the cryptocurrency industry — a journey that included his testimony before the U.S. Congress, a Super Bowl advertisement and dreams of a future run for president — hit a new bottom Thursday when a New York jury convicted him of fraud in a scheme that cheated customers and investors of at least $10 billion US.

After the month-long trial, jurors rejected Bankman-Fried's claim during three days on the witness stand in Manhattan federal court that he never committed fraud or meant to cheat customers before FTX, once the world's second-largest crypto exchange, collapsed into bankruptcy a year ago.

Ellison, 28, testified that Bankman-Fried directed her while she was chief executive of Alameda Research to commit fraud as he pursued ambitions to lead huge companies, spend money influentially and even finance a presidential run.

Becoming tearful as she described the collapse of the cryptocurrency empire last November, Ellison said the revelations that caused customers collectively to demand their money back, exposing the fraud, brought a "relief that I didn't have to lie anymore."

Bankman-Fried was arrested in the Bahamas last December and extradited to the United States, where he was freed on a $250 million personal recognizance bond with electronic monitoring and a requirement that he remain at the home of his parents in Palo Alto, California.

During the trial, prosecutors used Bankman-Fried's public statements, online announcements and his Congressional testimony against him, showing how the entrepreneur repeatedly promised customers that their deposits were safe and secure as late as last Nov. 7, when he tweeted "FTX is fine.

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[–] db2@sopuli.xyz 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Guilty on all counts. How will they claw back the money he gave his parents for example?

[–] AnimorphFan1996@lemmy.whynotdrs.org 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Giving money to your parents in order to avoid paying it back is a fraudulent conveyance. Also called a fraudulent transfer or voidable transaction. In order to prove intent, the court looks for the badges of fraud:

becoming insolvent because of the transfer;
lack or inadequacy of consideration;
family or insider relationship among parties;
the retention of possession, benefits or use of property in question;
the existence of the threat of litigation;
the financial situation of the debtor at the time of transfer or after transfer;
the existence or a cumulative effect of a series of transactions after the onset of debtor’s financial difficulties;
the general chronology of events;
secrecy of the transaction in question; and
deviation from the usual method or course of business.

It seems that a lot of these apply to Sam Bankman-Fried. So I hope that creditors succeed in their clawbacks. Instead of giving to his parents, a better strategy would have been to move to Florida and buy an expensive home. The homestead exemption is in the Florida state constitution, so it can take precedence over their fraudulent conveyance statute.

This worked in part for OJ Simpson and many others. Incidentally, Ken Griffin is building a $1 billion home in Florida –– the most expensive in the world. And he bought another for his mother. So he is kinda combining both strategies –– buying a home and giving to his parents. I'm also thinking that buying the constitution could be related to this somehow.

[–] jersan@lemmy.whynotdrs.org 2 points 1 year ago

September 7, 2022 to November 11, 2022 - GameStop's brief relationship with FTX

[–] Zuberi@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 1 year ago

I'm super excited to see the tokenized stocks slowly bubble to the top along w/ the swaps in a 1:2 punch

[–] jersan@lemmy.whynotdrs.org 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

some discussion on reddit:

r/superstonk 1, r/superstonk 2, r/cryptocurrency 1, r/cryptocurrency 2

[–] remotelove@lemmy.ca 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Fuck Reddit. Start new conversations here.

[–] BeelouTheHornedBeast@lemmy.whynotdrs.org 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Horribly under utilized. Reddit doing their IPO is probably being leveraged against them to push this censorship on their platform in some backroom meetings. But what do I know, I'm just a ape.