Feds Seized Bankman-Fried, The Founder Of FTX, Of Roughly $700 Million
According to a court document filed on Friday, federal authorities confiscated roughly $700 million in assets from FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried in January, most of which were in the form of Robinhood stock.
Bankman-Fried has entered a not-guilty plea to fraud charges after being accused of stealing billions of dollars from FTX users to settle debts accrued by his crypto-focused hedge firm. His trial is slated to begin in October.
The Department of Justice previously disclosed the confiscation of Robinhood shares, but on Friday it released a more thorough list of all the assets that had been taken, including cash stored at several banks and assets placed at cryptocurrency exchange Binance.
There have been disagreements about who is the rightful owner of the confiscated Robinhood shares, which are worth roughly $525 million, between Bankman-Fried, FTX, and insolvent crypto lender BlockFi.
On Thursday, authorities confiscated $94.5 million in cash from a Silvergate Bank account linked to FTX Digital Markets, FTX’s Bahamas-based business, in the most recent asset seizure revealed by the DOJ. More than $7 million was taken by the DOJ from other Silvergate accounts linked to FTX and Bankman-Fried.
In the past, the DOJ confiscated up to $50 million from a Moonstone Bank account belonging to FTX Digital Markets in Washington state.
The DOJ also declared that Bankman-three Fried’s Binance accounts’ assets were susceptible to criminal forfeiture, although it did not specify how much was in those accounts.
