Sam Bankman-Fried Charged With New Crimes As Prosecutors Detail Illegal Political Deals

Bankman-Fried’s charges have been expanded in the latest indictment brought forth by federal prosecutors.

Federal prosecutors have announced a new indictment of Sam Bankman-Fried with four additional criminal charges.

The document alleging these new charges starts with the claim that “From at least in or about 2019, up to and including in or about November 2022, Samuel Bankman-Fried, a/k/a ‘SBF,’ the defendant, corrupted the operations of the cryptocurrency companies he founded and controlled.”

In addition to the original counts that SBF is facing, prosecutors allege that he is also guilty of conspiracy to commit bank fraud and conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money transmitter. Previously, SBF was charged with all of the following counts by the United States Southern District Court of New York, including:

• Conspiracy to commit wire fraud on customers
• Wire fraud on customers
• Conspiracy to commit wire fraud on lenders
• Wire fraud on lenders
• Conspiracy to commit commodities fraud
• Conspiracy to commit securities fraud
• Conspiracy to commit money laundering
• And conspiracy to defraud the United States and violate the Campaign Finance Laws.

These charges followed his arrest in December in the Bahamas, after the incredibly large failure of the FTX exchange empire. The industry is still reeling from both the business impact as well as the regulatory scrutiny that has followed since.

“Contrary to Bankman-Fried’s promises to FTX customers that the exchange would protect their interests and segregate their assets, Bankman-Fried routinely tapped FTX customer assets to provide interest-free capital for his and Alameda's private expenditures, and in the process exposed FTX customers to massive, undisclosed risk,” the document with the new charges alleges. “In addition, while Bankman-Fried publicly claimed that FTX operated independently from Alameda' s cryptocurrency trading and investments in other companies, by his design, the reality was otherwise.”

In addition to the functional issues with FTX, alleged illegal donations are now being further detailed, with the indictment examining how SBF utilized others to contribute to political movements that he did not want himself or his business entities to be tied to.

“Bankman-Fried caused substantial contributions to be made in support of candidates of both major political parties and across the political spectrum,” the document alleges. “Bankman-Fried, however, did not want to be known as a left-leaning partisan, or to have his name publicly attached to Republican candidates. In those instances when he wanted to obscure his association with certain contributions, Bankman-Fried and others conspired to and did have those contributions made in the names of [FTX executives] CC-1 and CC-2.

As part of this scheme, contributions were coordinated to be made in the names of the two FTX straw donors to candidates they did not necessarily support or know. These straw donations were instead made for purposes of furthering the political agenda of SBF while providing him cover to avoid being associated with certain contributions, and concealing that the source of the contributions was in fact Alameda.”

Bankman-Fried’s highly anticipated trial is set for October 2023.