Disgraced FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried received close to a billion dollars in cash payments in the months leading up to the bankruptcy of the crypto exchange.
A recent court filing shows that Bankman-Fried began to collect millions of dollars in cash payments from FTX as early as January 2022 until October of the same year, a month before the exchange imploded.
The documents also that the former FTX CEO received cash payments to the tune of $200 million on two separate occasions.
All in all, Bankman-Fried gobbled up more than $905 million from FTX in a period of nine months.
Bankman-Fried is currently awaiting trial and has been charged with defrauding investors and mishandling billions of dollars worth of customer funds related to FTX’s collapse last year. If convicted, he faces decades behind bars.
The FTX founder is not the only ex-executive who benefited from the funds of the now-defunct FTX empire.
Court documents show that FTX shelled out $2.513 million to pay for the yacht of Sam Trabucco, the former co-CEO of FTX’s trading arm Alameda Research. The transaction happened less than six months before Trabucco left the firm.
Meanwhile, Caroline Ellison, who is also a former co-CEO of Alameda, received $3.5 million in cash payments in September 2022.
Others who collected millions of dollars in cash payments from the bankrupt crypto exchange include former FTX executives Gary Wang, Ryan Salame, Nishad Singh and Jonathan Cheesman.
