Feds seize nearly 700 million from FTX founder Bankman Fried

Feds seize nearly $700 million from FTX founder Bankman-Fried

Jan 20 (Portal) – Federal prosecutors seized nearly $700 million in assets from FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried in January, mostly in the form of Robinhood shares, according to a court filing on Friday.

Bankman-Fried, who has been accused of stealing billions of dollars from FTX clients to pay off debts at his crypto-focused hedge fund, has pleaded not guilty to the fraud charges. He is due to be tried in October.

The Justice Department unveiled the seizure of Robinhood stock earlier this month, but on Friday provided a more complete list of the assets seized, including cash held at various banks and assets deposited with crypto exchange Binance.

Ownership of about $525 million in the confiscated Robinhood shares has been the subject of disputes between Bankman-Fried, FTX and bankrupt crypto lender BlockFi.

The most recent asset seizure reported by the DOJ took place on Thursday when prosecutors seized $94.5 million in cash from an account at Silvergate Bank, which was linked to FTX Digital Markets, FTX’s subsidiary in the Bahamas. The DOJ seized more than $7 million from other Silvergate accounts linked to Bankman-Fried and FTX.

The DOJ previously seized nearly $50 million from an FTX Digital Markets account at Moonstone Bank, a small Washington state bank.

The DOJ also said that assets in three Binance accounts linked to Bankman-Fried had lapsed, but did not provide an estimate of the value in those accounts.

Reporting by Dietrich Knauth; Edited by Noeleen Walder and Daniel Wallis

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