In a statement, the Senate Banking Committee says @SBF_FTX has to declined to appear before the Senate Banking Committee and that his team has said they are unwilling to accept service of a subpoena.
— Hannah Lang (@hannahdlang) December 12, 2022
We enter the Find Out section of our FAFO narrative:
USA Damian Williams: Earlier this evening, Bahamian authorities arrested Samuel Bankman-Fried at the request of the U.S. Government, based on a sealed indictment filed by the SDNY. We expect to move to unseal the indictment in the morning and will have more to say at that time.
— US Attorney SDNY (@SDNYnews) December 12, 2022
Per Reuters:
… A spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s office in Manhattan confirmed Bankman-Fried had been arrested in The Bahamas but declined to comment on what the charges were.
“As a result of the notification received and the material provided therewith, it was deemed appropriate for the Attorney General to seek SBF’s arrest and hold him in custody pursuant to our nation’s Extradition Act,” the office of The Bahamas Attorney General Ryan Pinder said…
In a series of interviews and public appearances in late November and December, Bankman-Fried acknowledged risk management failures but sought to distance himself from accusations of fraud, saying he never knowingly commingled customer funds on FTX with funds at his proprietary trading firm, Alameda Research.
“I didn’t ever try to commit fraud,” Bankman-Fried said in a Nov. 30 interview at the New York Times‘ Dealbook Summit, adding he doesn’t personally think he has any criminal liability.
FTX, which had been among the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges, filed for bankruptcy protection on Nov. 11 in one of the highest-profile crypto blowups after traders pulled $6 billion from the platform in three days and rival exchange Binance abandoned a rescue deal.
The liquidity crunch came after Bankman-Fried secretly moved $10 billion of FTX customer funds to Alameda, Reuters reported, citing two people familiar with the matter. At least $1 billion in customer funds had vanished, the people said…
“We all want to know who did this” https://t.co/MuzEHJnS3z
— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) December 12, 2022
Monday Evening Open Thread: Crypto-Grifter SBF BustedPost + Comments (98)