Fresh charges against FTX co-founder Sam Bankman-Fried include references to a pair of co-conspirators the U.S. says were involved in illegally seeking to influence the regulation of digital assets.
Bankman-Fried is accused of a massive fraud that led to last year’s implosion of the cryptocurrency exchange. The new charges refer to two unidentified people the government says participated in the alleged illegal campaign finance scheme.
In addition to Bankman-Fried himself, Ryan Salame, former co-chief executive officer of FTX Digital Markets, and Nishad Singh, FTX’s former director of engineering, were among the largest political donors in the FTX universe. Together they gave US$70.5 million in the 2022 midterm elections. Bankman-Fried previously donated $5.6 million in the election cycle.
Prosecutors claim Bankman-Fried and the co-conspirators made more than 300 illegal political donations in the tens of millions of dollars, using straw donors or corporate funds.
Neither Salame nor Singh was cited in the indictment, and neither has been charged. Lawyers for both didn’t immediately respond to calls and emails seeking comment on the new indictment.
A spokesman for Bankman-Fried declined to comment on the new charges.
Gary Wang, who co-founded FTX with Bankman-Fried and was its chief coder, and Caroline Ellison, who was CEO of its trading affiliate Alameda Research and Bankman-Fried’s romantic partner, have pleaded guilty in the sprawling case and are cooperating with the government against him. Both were mentioned in the new indictment, separately from the two co-conspirators.
The 39-page superseding indictment was unsealed on Thursday adding four new counts against the FTX co-founder and recasting the earlier, 14-page charging papers. Such new indictments can also be used to add a defendant to a case, but no new defendant was named in the revised document.
The new indictment includes bank fraud charges, violations of law in money-transmitting operations and demands for the forfeiture of assets. Those include assets held in Binance accounts and more than 55 million shares held in Robinhood Markets, a commission-free investing and trading app, as well as more than $170 million in cash previously held at Silvergate Bank and other banks.
Bankman-Fried was charged in December with eight criminal counts, including conspiracy and wire fraud, for allegedly misusing billions of dollars in customers’ funds before the spectacular collapse of his cryptocurrency empire.
That indictment followed weeks of speculation the 30-year-old would end up in handcuffs after his company — one of the biggest cryptocurrency exchanges in the world — ended up in bankruptcy.
--With assistance from Olga Kharif, Ava Benny-Morrison and Chris Dolmetsch.
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