by Aaron Kliegman at Just the News
As the dust settles from FTX’s epic collapse and investors try to recover billions of lost dollars, it’s becoming increasingly clear that one group benefited greatly from Sam Bankman-Fried’s alleged fraud: the D.C. politicians he wanted to influence.
Lawmakers, primarily Democrats, and organizations backing them raked in millions in campaign cash from Bankman-Fried and his top lieutenants, who allegedly broke several election finance laws in a bid to buy influence across the nation’s capital, according to federal prosecutors and the extensive money trail of his political donations.
Bankman-Fried, founder and former CEO of the now-bankrupt cryptocurrency giant FTX, was arrested Monday by Bahamian authorities at the request of the U.S. government. The next morning, the Justice Department, Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), and Commodity Futures Trading Commission all filed civil and criminal charges against him in “parallel actions.”
Bankman-Fried could face up to 115 years in prison if convicted on all eight counts against him in a newly unsealed indictment from the Justice Department. Federal prosecutors from the Southern District of New York are accusing the disgraced crypto mogul of wire fraud, wire fraud conspiracy, and conspiracy to commit money laundering, among other charges.
The indictment came in the wake of FTX filing for bankruptcy last month. According to prosecutors and the indictment, however, Bankman-Fried’s alleged criminal activity dates back to well before the company’s fall to at least 2019, when the cryptocurrency exchange was founded.
“From 2019 until earlier this year,…
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