Corruption is Everywhere > Certainly in Bitcoin, Just ask Sam Bankman-Fried

 

Sam Bankman-Fried sentenced to 25 years in prison

— as judge rips him as power-obsessed scammer

By 

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Published March 28, 2024

 Updated March 28, 2024, 5:57 p.m. ET

A Manhattan judge ripped Sam Bankman-Fried as a remorseless scammer obsessed with political power as he sentenced the dethroned crypto king to 25 years in prison Thursday — five months after he was found guilty of stealing more than $8 billion from customers of his now-bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange FTX.

Judge Lewis Kaplan said the 32-year-old former billionaire owner of the popular FTX trading platform “presented himself as the good guy” in favor of “appropriate regulation of the crypto industry” — but that his friendly persona was just an “act.”

“He did it because he wanted to be a hugely, hugely politically influential person in this country,” Kaplan said inside a packed federal courtroom in Manhattan. The judge then blasted the fallen mogul as having an “apparent lack of any real remorse.”

Bankman-Fried was also ordered to pay back more than $11 billion to FTX’s users, investors and lenders — but it was unclear Thursday how much of that sum he’d be able to pay.

The judge delivered the sentence — which was less than one-fourth of the 110-year max that Bankman-Fried faced and well under the 40-to-50 years prosecutors suggested  — after the disgraced tech whiz delivered a 20-minute, meandering mea culpa to the court.

Corruption is Everywhere > Billions in Bitcoin Lost to Criminals - FTX and Inner Mongolia

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Disgraced FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried busted in Bahamas,

charged with defrauding investors out of $1.8B

By Emily Crane and Lee Brown

December 12, 2022 6:52pm  Updated

Accused crypto crook Sam Bankman-Fried has been busted in the Bahamas — accused of “massive, years-long fraud” that defrauded investors out of $1.8 billion through “a house of cards” built “on a foundation of deception.”

The fallen 30-year-old FTX mogul was arrested Monday night after the Bahamian government received formal notification from the US of charges against him.

The US attorney for the Southern District of New York is expected to charge him Tuesday with wire fraud, wire fraud conspiracy, securities fraud, securities fraud conspiracy and money laundering.

As he awaited his first appearance before a magistrate in the Bahamas on Tuesday, he was separately charged by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

“We allege that Sam 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,” SEC Chair Gary Gensler said while revealing the civil complaint.

“The alleged fraud committed by Mr. Bankman-Fried is a clarion call to crypto platforms that they need to come into compliance with our laws.”

Disgraced former FTX co-founder Sam Bankman-Fried was arrested in the Bahamas on Monday.

Getty Images

The SEC complaint says that “Bankman-Fried raised more than $1.8 billion from investors” who believed “that FTX had appropriate controls and risk management measures.”

“Unbeknownst to those investors (and to FTX’s trading customers), Bankman-Fried was orchestrating a massive, years-long fraud, diverting billions of dollars of the trading platform’s customer funds for his own personal benefit and to help grow his crypto empire.”

Bankman-Fried “portrayed himself as a responsible leader of the crypto community” and “touted the importance of regulation and accountability,” the complaint says.

A house in the Bahamas linked to disgraced FTX co-founder Bankman-Fried. Albany Bahamas

It just seems odd to me that the house and yard of such a chronic liar would be built with so many straight lines. Curious.

“Customers around the world believed his lies, and sent billions of dollars to FTX, believing their assets were secure.”

Bankman-Fried also “placed billions of dollars of FTX customer funds into Alameda,” his privately held crypto fund, without telling them, the complaint alleges.

“He then used Alameda as his personal piggy bank to buy luxury condominiums, support political campaigns, and make private investments, among other uses,” the complaint reads. 

“None of this was disclosed to FTX equity investors or to the platform’s trading customers.”

China arrests 63 in $1.7 billion crypto money laundering scheme

By Simon Druker

   

Police in northern China arrested 63 people over the weekend, accused of laundering nearly $1.7 billion worth of

Chinese Yuan using cryptocurrency. Photo courtesy of Public Security Bureau of Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region

Dec. 12 (UPI) -- Police in northern China arrested 63 people accused of laundering nearly $1.7 billion worth of Chinese yuan using cryptocurrency.

The Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region Public Security Bureau announced the arrests on Saturday, seizing around $4.5 million in Chinese currency in the process.

Those arrested have ties to a money laundering gang, which started operating in May 2021, according to police.

This comes amid a growing crackdown from Beijing on China's crypto market, which ranks fourth worldwide, despite an official ban on trading.

Police accused the gang of collecting illicit proceeds from online pyramid schemes, fraud and gambling among other sources. Those involved then converted the cash into Tether, a stablecoin on par with the U.S. dollar.

The money was eventually converted back into Chinese yuan, through several different cryptocurrencies.

Police say the participants used the messaging app Telegram, which is banned in China, to recruit international participants and help launder the money back into Chinese currency.

More than 200 police officers were involved in the operation in the northern region of the country. A pair of suspects were also traced to Bangkok, Thailand and extradited to China, according to police.

Investigators were first tipped off in July, after identifying a bank account with regular monthly deposits of around $1.4 million or 10 million yuan.

China has been trying to root out cryptocurrency from its financial markets for more than a year. In June 2021, Beijing publicized a multi-billion-dollar shutdown of the crypto trading industry.

Despite the official ban, the country still has a large underground community.

Chinese authorities arrested over 1,100 people in 2021 in relation to crypto-related money laundering.

In case you haven't figured it out yet, these two stories make it clear that you should only invest in crypto-currencies with money you can afford to lose.

Hidden Off-Shore Banking Set to Result in Dramatic Changes to Icelandic Government

Iceland’s Pirate Party poised for

Saturday election win – poll

Anti-elitism in Iceland appears to be more successful than Trump's orange revolution in America

Members of the Icelandic Pirate Party © Píratar / Facebook

Iceland’s national election is likely to bring unprecedented results, with a new poll suggesting the Pirate Party will win. Led by a poet and former WikiLeaks activist, it’s running on an anti-corruption campaign against the financial and political elite.

An opinion poll conducted by the Social Science Research Institute of the University of Iceland and commissioned by Morgunblaðið newspaper found that one in five voters intends to cast their ballot for the Pirate Party on Saturday.

That figure puts the party in first place with 22.6 percent of the votes – 1.5 percent ahead of the center-right Independence Party, which is currently in power. Those numbers would give each of the two parties 15 MPs in the 63-seat parliament.

Such a win would be history-making for the Pirate Party, which is led by Birgitta Jónsdóttir – a poet, web developer, former WikiLeaks activist.

The party's forecast success is largely based on its campaign against perceived corruption among Iceland's elite.

Support for the party increased by a whopping 43 percent after the resignation of Prime Minister Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson in April, after it was revealed that he and his family had sheltered money in offshore accounts. The party's cause was also helped by the Panama Papers, which revealed other prominent Icelandic politicians had done the same.

Earlier this year, Jónsdóttir called her party's success “strange and very exciting,” adding that it was “driven not by fear, but by courage and hope,” the Guardian reported.

However, she has acknowledged that the party – which was created less than four years ago as a movement against global copyright laws – is inexperienced when it comes to the economy.


Birgitta Jónsdóttir © Icelandic Pirate Party / Wikipedia

“We know that we are new to this and it is important that we are extra careful and extra critical on ourselves to not take too much on. I really don't think that we are going to make a lot of ripples in the economy in the first term,” she told Reuters last month.

However, the Pirate Party – whose campaign is largely crowdfunded – is after more than just looser copyright laws and less corruption from politicians. In an effort to get young voters on board, the party has asked the developers of the popular app Pokemon Go to turn polling stations into Pokestops – locations where players can collect the items necessary to catch Pokemon.

The party has also promised to grant asylum to US whistleblower Edward Snowden and accept the bitcoin currency. It has also pledged to give voters a direct say over policy and decriminalize drugs.

One caution for Icelanders: it is one thing to vote out a government that is corrupt, but please make sure the government you vote-in is one you actually want.

The Pirate Party last week ruled out the possibility of entering a coalition with the Independence Party (Sjálfstæðisflokkurinn) or the centrist Progressive Party (Framsóknarflokkurinn). Jónsdóttir has suggested she would prefer to be the speaker of the Icelandic parliament, rather than becoming prime minister.

The party's predicted success will be a huge leap from the 2013 general election, when it gained just 5 percent of votes and three seats in parliament. That result was still extremely significant, however, as it made Iceland the only country in the world have members of the Pirate movement in government.

The Pirate Party first began in Sweden in 2006, and was created to bring about digital copyright reform. There are now 40 such parties around the world.