Sam Bankman-Fried, the Founder of the collapsed cryptocurrency exchange FTX, has been arrested in the Bahamas as US prosecutors filed criminal charges, the US attorney for the Southern District of New York said in a tweet post.
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The government of the Bahamas said in a statement that the US is "likely to request his extradition," without elaborating on the timeframe. According to reports, the US authorities are planning to fill criminal charges against Bankman-Fried on wire fraud, securities fraud and money laundering.
Separately, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has charged the disgraced crypto billionaire with defrauding investors. The watchdog believes that at least since May 2019, FTX raised more than $1.8 billion from equity investors, without telling them that FTX was sending customers' funds to Alameda Research, Bankman-Fried's privately-held crypto hedge fund.
The SEC also found out that FTX offered to Alameda an undisclosed "special treatment," including providing the hedge fund with an unlimited "line of credit" funded by the platform's customers. SEC Chair, Gary Gensler, said in a press release that Bankman-Fried "built a house of cards on a foundation of deception while telling investors that it was one of the safest buildings in crypto."
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