FTX scandal: 110 years in prison and 8 billion loss stored in “account of our Korean friend”

The FTX scandal is far from over of course. The American media can’t stop talking about it since so many celebrities promoted Sam Bankman-Fried’s crypto platform and because he has by now been betrayed by his former girlfriend Caroline Ellison, CEO of Alameda and colleague Gary Wang, co-founder of FTX. Hollywood also seems to be busy converting the story into a series.

Business lounge in JFK

During his interview round at the end of November, SBF said he only had $100,000 in his account. Yet that turns out to be enough money to afford a business class ticket, even after his arrest. SFB was photographed at JFK airport, in the American Airlines lounge together with his father.

One of my followers spotted SBF chilling at JFK airport last night and snapped some icon photos pic.twitter.com/0Lg6OdqZz8

— litquidity (@litcapital) December 23, 2022

110 years in prison

Caroline Ellison, the former girlfriend of SBF and the CEO of Alameda, thus seems to have cooperated with the FBI to reduce her own sentence. That’s a good thing because according to calculations she risked some 110 years in prison for fraud.

From 2019 through 2022, I was aware that Alameda was provided access to a borrowing facility on FTX.com, the cryptocurrency exchange run by Mr. Bankman-Fried.

Ellison declared in her testimony.

Another fun fact is that SBF hid the $8 billion loss on his computer in a folder called “our Korean friend’s account.” Many analysts therefore think that SBF got into trouble because of the fall of Terra Luna early in the year and that the “Korean friend” refers to Terra founder Do Kwon, who is still a fugitive. Last we heard he was spotted in Serbia

Long prison sentence

Billionaire Mark Cuban last week made one a first public comment about the arrest of SBF. The owner of NBA team the Dallas Mavericks believes the FTX founder faces a long prison sentence.

Cuban said on the Club Random podcast about Sam Bankman-Fried that:

I don’t know all the details, but if I were him, I’d be afraid of going to jail for a long time. It sure sounds bad. I’ve actually talked to the guy and I thought he was smart, but boy, I had no idea he was going to, you know, take other people’s money and put it to his personal use. Yeah, that sure…seems like what happened.