FTX Billion-Dollar Fraud: Expert Figures Out Where The Missing $9 Billion Went
October 19 2023 - 6:00AM
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The trial of the former CEO of the defunct crypto exchange FTX, Sam
Bankman-Fried (SBF), continued on October 18 with the direct
examination of the prosecution’s expert witness, Peter Easton, an
Accounting Professor who works at the University of Notre
Dame. Expert Testimony Shows Customers’ Funds Were Stolen
According to a report by Bloomberg, Easton explained that $9
billion in customers’ funds had already gone missing since June
2022, five months before FTX filed for bankruptcy. He specifically
alluded to the customers’ deposits, which were made into Alameda
Research’s bank accounts. Related Reading: When Will Bitcoin
Price Reach $1,000,000? Pundit Lays Out A Timeline Having laid a
foundation that Bankman-Fried stole FTX’s customers’ funds through
Alameda, the next step in the prosecution’s case was to show that
these funds were indeed stolen, and that was the role of Easton,
who has an expertise in “penetrating the details of financial
statements.” He stated that based on deposits made by
customers, Alameda was meant to have held $11.3 billion in FTX
customers’ funds, but only $2.3 billion was actually in the trading
firm’s bank accounts. According to him, these funds were ultimately
used for several purposes. FTT Token bulls struggle to hold $1 |
Source: FTTUSDT on Tradingview.com What The Stolen FTX Funds Were
Used For Easton further provided details as to where some of these
funds went. He alleged that some of these funds were used to invest
in companies like Anthony Scaramucci’s SkyBridge Capital, Lily
Zhang’s Modulo Capital, Robinhood, Dave and Anthropic.
Specifically, he stated that the investment in Modulo was 100% from
customers’ funds, with him being able to trace the transaction from
FTX’s database. While giving her testimony, Alameda’s ex-CEO,
Caroline Ellison, also revealed that Alameda, with SBF’s
permission, used FTX’s customers’ funds to repay its lenders.
Easton corroborated this statement as he mentioned that some of the
missing funds were used to repay lenders like Celsius, Abra, Maple,
and Anchorage. Related Reading: Analyst Predicts XRP Price To
Hit $100: Here’s How To Become A Millionaire His testimony didn’t
stop there, though, as, according to him, some of the funds were
also used to fund political campaigns, charity foundations, and
real estate purchases. Part of these political contributions
included the $1 million that FTX’s Director of Engineering Nishad
Singh had donated to Mind The Gap (MTG), a Political Action
Committee (PAC) that SBF’s mum Barbara Fried co-founded.
Additionally, $96 million of these customers’ funds is said to have
been spent on real estate purchases, of which a property owned by
SBF’s parents happens to be among them, going by the evidence
tendered by the prosecution. The professor mentioned that all
these discoveries were made following his analysis of Alameda’s
statements, information from the FTX database, documents from
lenders, and on-chain data. Featured image from Financial Times,
chart from Tradingview.com
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