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Sam Bankman-Fried, the disgraced former CEO of FTX — the bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange that was worth $32 billion a few weeks ago — has a real knack for self-promotional PR. For years, he cast himself in the likeness of a young boy genius turned business titan, capable of miraculously growing his crypto empire as other players got wiped out. Everyone from Silicon Valley’s top venture capitalists to A-list celebrities bought the act.
Fraud is the kind of criminal charge that can put you behind bars for life. With Bankman-Fried, the question is whether he misled FTX customers to believe their money was available, and not being used as collateral for loans or for other purposes,
The Department of Justice is most likely to pursue criminal charges in the U.S. The Wall Street Journal reported that the DOJ and the SEC were both probing FTX’s collapse, and were in close contact with each other.