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originally posted by: TheNextPhase2030
Finally, he might bring down the whole crypto house of cards...
originally posted by: JinMI
a reply to: peaceinoutz
Oh....he got a lawyer alright.
Aricle that goes with the headline: www.foxnews.com...
Miranda Devine calls out 'suspicious' timing of FTX founder's arrest: 'Obviously trying to protect someone'
Sam Bankman-Fried was detained in the Bahamas hours before scheduled congressional testimony.
— Two senior executives associated with collapsed crypto exchange FTX have pleaded guilty to multiple criminal charges and are cooperating with federal prosecutors, according to unsealed court records. Additionally, the pair face civil fraud charges from the Securities and Exchange Commission that were announced Wednesday night. Gary Wang, the co-founder of FTX, and Caroline Ellison, who served as CEO of the hedge fund Alameda Research, pleaded guilty to multiple counts of conspiracy and fraud for their roles in the fraud scheme that led to the collapse of the crypto-trading platform.
In letters dated Sunday, December 18, and signed the following day, Ellison and Wang agreed to plead guilty and cooperate with prosecutors.
Wang created FTX’s source code that allowed Alameda to divert FTX customer funds and Ellison used misappropriated funds for the hedge fund’s trading activity, according to the SEC. “Ellison and Wang were active participants in the scheme to deceive FTX’s investors and engaged in conduct that was critical to its success,” the SEC said in a release.
Sam Bankman-Fried, the disgraced founder of crypto exchange FTX, appeared in a US courtroom in New York Thursday to face eight counts of fraud and conspiracy. A judge released him on a $250 million bond in his first appearance on American soil since his arrest last week in the Bahamas. The judge agreed to a bail package proposed by federal prosecutors and lawyers for Bankman-Fried that also requires the former so-called crypto king to have an electronic monitoring bracelet and be under house arrest at his parents home in Palo Alto, California. He has already surrendered his passport.
Caroline Ellison, the former CEO of Sam Bankman-Fried's trading firm Alameda Research, said she conspired with others to use billions of dollars of customers' funds from SBF's failed cryptocurrency exchange FTX (FTT-USD) while misleading lenders about the true nature of the companies' financial relationship.
“While I was co-CEO and then CEO, I understood that Alameda had made numerous large illiquid venture investments and had lent money to Mr. Bankman-Fried and other FTX executives,” Ellison swore, adding that the investments were financed with short-term and open-term loans worth several billion dollars from lenders across the crypto space. “I understood that FTX would need to use customer funds to finance its loans to Alameda,” she said
“[Citadel’s $16 billion profit] even surpasses [John] Paulson’s 2007 gain, which has been described as ‘the greatest trade ever,’” Rick Sopher, chairman of LCH Investments, said in a press release on Monday. Paulson, an investor, made $15 billion in 2007 after he bet that the value of securities backed by subprime mortgages would collapse, an event that helped trigger the global financial crisis.
Many investors are pointing to the similarities between FTX and Citadel. One of many common threads between the two companies is that of Brett Harrison. Who is Harrison? And how does he connect one of Wall Street’s most controversial hedge funds with one of crypto’s most controversial exchanges?
Before moving into his position at FTX, Harrison spent two years at Citadel Securities, Griffin’s market-maker company. Here, Harrison took on two roles — as head of exchange-traded fund (ETF) technology and head of semi-systematic technology. In these roles, Harrison would lead Citadel Securities teams in managing quantitative trading strategies and increasing the company’s profits through optimization. These skills would lend themselves favorably to Harrison as he departed Citadel Securities — right in the middle of its controversial role in the GameStop (NYSE:GME) saga — for a job at FTX.US. Harrison would become the first president of the U.S.-based company, reuniting the executive with Sam Bankman-Fried for the first time since the pair worked at Jane Street together.
Harrison jumped ship just over a month before the company’s precarious financial situation became public knowledge, stepping away from his role and playing advisor to the soon-bankrupt company.
He is attempting to raise funds for a new crypto-trading software startup — one that would provide optimized trading for larger investors. Meanwhile, Citadel Securities has made an investment in this space, backing crypto exchange EDX Markets.