FTX Sues to Reclaim $700M Bankman-Fried Allegedly Spent on Celebrity Connections

FTX’s new administration is attempting to retrieve an eye-watering $700 million that disgraced crypto mogul Sam Bankman-Fried allegedly used to purchase affect.

A lawsuit filed Thursday talks of Bankman-Fried’s encounters with “super-networker” Michael Kives, a Hollywood agent turned investor and ex-aide to Hillary Clinton.

FTX’s new administration is now suing Kives and his funding agency, K5, to try to get the allegedly misappropriated funds again. 

Based on the lawsuit, Bankman-Fried met Kives at a complicated dinner stuffed with high-profile visitors, together with “a number of billionaires” and “a former Presidential candidate” again in February 2022.

He later talked about Kives being “most likely probably the most linked particular person” he’d ever met and “gushed” about his entry to the wealthy and well-known. 

This led to Bankman-Fried allegedly authorizing the switch of $700 million to Kives’ K5 entities all through 2022, in response to the lawsuit—as a result of, within the phrases of Bankman-Fried, Kives was “one thing of a one-stop store for relationships that we should always make the most of.”

The funds had been allegedly made by shell firms, in response to the criticism.

FTX was a crypto alternate that went bankrupt final 12 months in a highly-publicized collapse. Prosecutors allege that the alternate was criminally mismanaged, and ex-boss and co-founder Sam Bankman-Fried was arrested within the Bahamas in December. 

Bankman-Fried was charged with eight monetary crimes by the Advanced Frauds and Cybercrime Unit within the Southern District of New York, and he pleaded not responsible in January. 

He was hit with additional fees in February and now faces 13—together with conspiracy to commit wire fraud, and conspiracy to defraud the US and violate marketing campaign finance legal guidelines.

It’s alleged Bankman-Fried commingled funds from FTX to make dangerous bets on sister alternate Alameda Analysis, which he additionally co-founded. 

Bankman-Fried gave the impression to be common with the institution: he dined with politicians and donated tens of millions to candidates, together with President Joe Biden. He later admitted donating to each Republicans and Democrats, however solely in secret to the previous.