While people who had put their money in crypto fraud racket FTX, many are anticipating that they may get refund once Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) is released from prison. But reality is – neither SBF is going to get released soon nor there is substantial money to make refunds. According to The Nassau Guardian, Sam Bankman-Fried is being held in the Bahamas Department of Correctional Services in the prison’s maximum security infirmary with five other inmates in a “dorm-style setting”. Bahamas’ acting commissioner of corrections Doan Cleare said SBF is in “good spirits” and that the prison is no longer infested with rodents.
According to a report published in the TechCrunch, SEC, CFTC and SDNY attorney’s office charge FTX’s Sam Bankman-Fried with defrauding investors.
The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has officially charged disgraced FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried with defrauding investors, it revealed following his arrest in the Bahamas.
The SEC said in a press release that in addition to being charged with fraud regarding equity investors in FTX, he is also being investigated regarding other securities law violations — and noted that there are ongoing investigations pending against others involved as well. The SEC is not the only one getting a hand on this ball, however: Both the Southern District of New York’s attorney’s office and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) also filed charges against Sam Bankman-Fried in “parallel actions”.
Multiple US government agencies held a press conference regarding the indictment of FTX’s former CEO, Sam Bankman-Fried. When asked whether the entities will bring charges against other individuals allegedly involved in the FTX collapse, Damian Williams, the US attorney for the Southern District of New York, said during the event, “I can only say this: Clearly, we are not done”.
The fate of FTX investors
Disgraced FTX co-founder Sam Bankman-Fried (now known to some as Scam Bankrun Fraud) is a son of professors. Both of his parents teach at Stanford University law school. The parents of SBF’s associate Caroline Ellison are economists at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Meaning these are people with highly-educated parents. Until now, SBF only is in police custody, while most of his cohorts are out of the reach of law.
Meanwhile, following collapse of FTX and speculations of more collapses in the crypto sector global audit firm Mazars has deleted the website that hosted proofs-of-reserves work for cryptocurrency exchanges. The company told Bloomberg that it is suspending its work with crypto companies on proofs-of-reserves reports going forward.
Mazars appeared a few times in crypto news over the past few weeks because it started issuing those reports for cryptocurrency exchanges. The idea is that exchanges could reassure their users after the FTX downfall. Mazars also used Merkle trees so that users could check that their crypto assets are included in the report by entering a hash.
Clients of the audit firm include Crypto.com and Kucoin. But the most prominent client was Binance. Mazars certified last week that Binance held enough bitcoins and wrapped bitcoins to cover all users’ balances on the exchange as of November 22.
But when Binance and Mazars announced the proof-of-reserves report for the exchange’s bitcoin reserves, many people were quick to point out that this report only covered a small portion of Binance’s activities.
It could be seen as a step in the right direction, but it doesn’t mean much when it comes to Binance’s handling of all crypto assets across all its products. Similarly, it’s hard to see whether user assets are separated properly from Binance’s own balance sheet.
As long as Binance doesn’t share the full picture, it’s impossible to say with 100 percent certainty that Binance currently holds user accounts in segregated crypto wallets without any market exposure.
