The disgraced former CEO of FTX Sam Bankman-fried just cashed out $684k to his crypto exchange in Seychelles while under house arrest, violating the terms of his bail.
Did disgraced crypto founder Sam Bankman-Fried just cash out $684k to a crypto exchange in the Seychelles while under house arrest?
His release conditions are that he not spend more than $1,000 without permission from the court.
Let's examine the evidence on chain 👇
— BowTiedIguana (@BowTiedIguana) December 30, 2022
The drama surrounding the FTX crash and Sam Bankman-fried has not lessened one bit. He was called to face judgment but did not make it to the hearing. Later claims came that he was arrested in the Bahamas and was to be extradited to the US.
He later posted bail worth $250k, which is believed to be part of the funds he stole from users. Part of his bail conditions was a limit on his spending. He wasn’t allowed to spend more than $1,000 without the permission of the court.
The story behind the $684k transaction started back in August 2020. When SBF agreed to take over the SushiSwap exchange from Chef Nomi, the agreement was for ownership to be transferred to one of Sam’s ETH addresses.
Thus, Chef Nomi transferred administrative ownership to Sam’s address back in 2020.
Fast forward to 2022, post-bail, SBF sent all his remaining assets to a new ETH address he created, and after three hours of that movement, over 100 new deposits were made to the new wallet from different addresses. All of which had links to Sam and Alameda.
Within five hours, multiple addresses owned mostly by the defunct hedge fund and Crashed FTX exchange had transferred $684k worth of funds. These were then transferred out to his no-KYC exchange based in Seychelles, and to the Bitcoin network via the Ren Protocol.
The Ren Protocol, formerly the Republic protocol, was funded by Alameda and Sam back in August. Ren claimed that nobody could Launder money or assets through its project and it was also part of FTX’s plan to develop the Solana network.
Fortunately, the Ethereum blockchain is immutable, which means evidence of SBF breaking bail terms is permanently available to the authorities. SBF has conducted transactions worth $683k more than his bail limit, thus the SEC attorneys were informed of the transaction.
If the assets were part of the bankruptcy estate of FTX and Alameda, they are not Sam’s assets, which would constitute an unlawful act. The transaction involved 32 wallets belonging to Alameda research, wallets that are supposed to be on lock and key following the filing of bankruptcy.
And the funds were transferred to projects that were owned by Sam.