Sam Bankman-Fried, who is the founder of the corrupt crypto exchange FTX, also happens to be the Democrats 2nd largest campaign donor. On Monday evening, he was charged in a criminal indictment with campaign finance violations and the details of his crimes turned out to be even worse than we originally thought.
The indictment, unsealed in a federal court in Los Angeles, accuses Bankman-Fried of making illegal contributions to four political campaigns over the course of 2021 and 2022. According to the indictment, between October 2021 and February 2022, Bankman-Fried made a total of $2.5 million in illegal contributions to the campaigns of two U.S. Senators, a U.S. House representative, and a U.S. presidential candidate. The report, however, suspiciously fails to mention the names of the candidates.
How did he make these donations? With customer funds. Yes, really.
Here’s the scoop from CNBC:
Federal authorities on Tuesday charged FTX co-founder Sam Bankman-Fried with using what they said was tens of millions of dollars of misappropriated customer funds to make illegal political donations to both Democratic and Republican candidates.
Prosecutors said one of the reasons he made those contributions was to influence the direction of policies and laws affecting the cryptocurrency industry.
Even though the report says he donated to “both” Democrats and Republicans, records show that the vast majority of his donations went to Democrats.
The indictment further alleges that Bankman-Fried disguised the contributions by routing them through a series of shell companies and bank accounts. He also allegedly lied to his own lawyers in order to conceal the source and nature of the contributions.
Bankman-Fried is charged with four counts of making a contribution in the name of another person, four counts of making a contribution in excess of the legal limit, and four counts of making a false statement to a federal agent.
