Special group will search for stolen FTX customer money
2023.01.04 12:54
Special group will search for stolen FTX customer money
Budrigannews.com – The FTX Task Force was established by the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York (SDNY) to handle investigations and prosecutions related to the collapse of the exchange and to “trace and recover” funds that have gone missing from customers.
U.S. Attorney Damian Williams, the federal prosecutor in the FTX case involving founder Sam Bankman-Fried, made the announcement in a statement.
Bankman-Fried has been charged by the Manhattan attorney’s office with conspiracy to commit wire and securities fraud, money laundering, and violating campaign finance laws.
Williams stated in the statement, “The Southern District of New York is working around the clock to respond to the implosion of FTX,” and added:
“It’s an all-hands-on-deck-moment.”
“We are launching the SDNY FTX Task Force to ensure that this urgent work continues with the support of all SDNY resources and expertise until justice is served,” the statement reads.
The SDNY claims that the “investigation and prosecution of matters related to the FTX collapse” will be the responsibility of the task force’s senior prosecutors from its securities and commodities fraud, public corruption, money laundering, and transnational crime enterprise units.
In the mean time, its “resource relinquishment and digital capacities” will be utilized to “follow and recuperate” the billions of dollars worth of missing client reserves, it added.
The new management of FTX had already begun a similar effort when it hired financial advisory firm AlixPartners in December to carry out “asset-tracing” for the company’s missing digital assets.
The Manhattan U.S. Lawyer’s Office apparently initially started its test of FTX’s breakdown soon after the firm petitioned for financial protection on Nov. 11.
As indicated by its site, the U.S. Lawyer’s Office for the Southern Region of New York is known for indicting cases including the infringement of government regulations and examines an expansive exhibit of criminal direct “in any event, when the lead emerges in far off places.”
Since September 2021, FTX and key executives like Bankman-Fried, co-founder Gary Wang, and Caroline Ellison, the former CEO of Alameda Research, had been operating out of the Bahamas, where many of the alleged crimes are thought to have been committed.
On Jan. 3, Bankman-Seared argued “not blameworthy” to each of the eight crook accusations connected with FTX’s collapse — which conveys a sum of 115 years of jail for the FTX pioneer in the event that he is sentenced.
Wang and Ellison pleaded guilty to federal fraud charges last month for their part in the FTX exchange’s demise.
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