Sam Bankman-Fried Is Charged With Fraud and Illegal Campaign Contributions

The United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York charged disgraced FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried (“SBF”) with eight criminal counts, including conspiracy and wire fraud, for allegedly misusing billions of dollars in customers’ funds prior to the collapse of his “House of Cards” cryptocurrency empire.[1]

FTX’s current CEO, John Ray III (yes, the same John Ray III that became the CEO of Enron and oversaw its liquidation during its years in bankruptcy) told congressional lawmakers on Tuesday that FTX lost $8 billion of customer money, stating that the company allowed “absolute concentration of control in the hands of a small group of grossly inexperienced, nonsophisticated individuals.”

This latest catastrophic implosion has reignited calls for US officials to regulate the largely unregulated cryptocurrency market. Having loaded FTX’s collapse and SBF’s fall from grace to their munition coffers, critics of the cryptocurrency industry ready themselves to welcome to the regulatory fray their advocate counterparts, who are now undoubtedly uttering “Alea iacta est”[2] from across the aisle.