Former FTX boss and co-founder Sam Bankman-Fried received $2.2 billion in payments and loans, mostly from Alameda Research, according to an announcement Wednesday of the failing stock exchange’s new leadership.
That number may seem even starker when compared to payments received by other executives, including former Alameda CEO Caroline Ellison, who only received $6 million.
A total of $3.2 billion was distributed to former FTX staff, documents filed by new management to showmost of it coming from the company’s sister commercial company, Alameda Research.
Alameda was at the center of the FTX drama: The quantitative trading firm, also founded by Bankman-Fried, had the ability to use FTX client assets for its own means and without oversight, according to new FTX CEO John J Ray III.
FTX was a huge digital asset exchange that allowed its customers to buy, sell, and bet on the future price of cryptocurrencies. The Bahamas-based entity had 134 companies under its umbrella but went bankrupt in November.
It is sudden bankruptcy was in part because its management was making risky bets with customer money through Alameda Research, prosecutors say. Bankman-Fried founded Alameda in 2019 but says he retired from day-to-day operations of the trading company in 2021.
Documents from this week show Bankman-Fried, better known as SBF, received most of the $3.2 billion in payouts reported by FTX’s new management, while the former chief engineering officer of the company Nishad Singh received $587 million and co-founder Gary Wang received $246 million.
Former FTX Digital Markets co-CEO Ryan Salame received $87 million and former Alameda Research co-head Sam Trabucco received $25 million, the announcement said, adding that that did not include the more than $240 million spent to buy a luxury property in the Bahamas. .
Trabucco, it should be noted, resigned as CEO of Alameda in August and has not been heard from publicly since. Authorities have yet to announce the charges against the former leader, unlike the rest of Bankman-Fried’s inner circle.
SBF is now facing 12 criminal charges in the United States. Some of those charges were brought in a superseding indictment last month and include conspiracy to defraud FTX customers in connection with the purchase and sale of derivatives, and conspiracy to to commit money laundering.
In January, Bankman-Fried pleaded not guilty to the original charges and is now awaiting a trial scheduled for October.
Ellison, Wang and Singh have all admitted to fraud and cooperate with investigators.
Ellison, who had an on-and-off romantic relationship with Bankman-Fried, was named co-CEO of Alameda with Trabucco in October 2021. She assumed the sole CEO role after Trabucco resigned. Ellison rose to prominence following the collapse of FTX after a weird tumblr blog executive-linked surfaced, revealing a strong fascination with polyamory and racial science from the author, presumed to be Ellison.
Meanwhile, billions of dollars in cash from FTX customers are still missing, with a large amount suspected stolen.
John J. Ray III, who is responsible for sorting out bankrupt companies, has said that the sudden collapse of the crypto company was caused by “a very small group of grossly inexperienced and unsophisticated individuals”.
The SBF spokesperson refused Decryptrequest for comment.