Sam Bankman-Fried’s assets worth nearly $700 million will be confiscated if he is convicted of fraud, according to federal prosecutors leading the case against the FTX founder.
In a court filing Friday, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Damian Williams, listed 10 accounts, with a mix of stocks, cash and cryptocurrency subject to forfeiture.
The asset pool includes about 55 million Bankman-Fried shares held at Robinhood Markets Inc. At the closing price, the stock was worth $526 million. The Justice Department previously announced that it had seized the shares, which it bought with a $456 million loan from Alameda Research, FTX’s sister trading house.
The property to be seized also includes more than $20 million held in an account in the name of Emergent Fidelity Technologies, the holding company used to buy shares, more than $171 million in US currency in an account in the name of FTX Digital Markets and assets in three Binance accounts. The accounts containing the cash were seized by the government between Jan. 4 and Jan. 19, according to the filing.
Prosecutors use confiscation orders as a means of confiscating assets that the defendant has acquired for profit. In the Bernie Madoff case, a judge ordered the late Ponzi schemer to forfeit more than $170 billion and his wife, $80 million. Ross Ulbricht, founder of Dark web bazaar Silk Road, was ordered to hand over approximately $28 million in Bitcoin as part of a 2014 forfeiture order.
Bankman-Fried has pleaded not guilty to eight counts of indictment, including fraud and campaign finance violations. He is accused of using FTX customer funds to prop up his business in Alameda, paying personal and real estate expenses. The 30-year-old is now free after signing a $250 million package that effectively puts him under house arrest at his parents’ home in California.
FTX’s new management, including restructuring expert John J. Ray III, has been able to trace billions of dollars in assets linked to the crypto empire as part of the bankruptcy process.
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