Two associates of FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried have pleaded guilty
What happens when three or more people put their heads together about how to take advantage of others’ thirst for wealth, in order to defraud them out of their life savings. The answer includes employing “sleight of hand” and exceptional skills of deceit. But, Ponzi schemes like this always end badly. Still people keep thinking they’ve got the “secret way.!” But nope! There is no secret way to avoid “the lessons in “What Goes Around Comes Around” on Amazon or Audible. Two associates of FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried have pleaded guilty
Find Rob’s book & ebook “What Goes Around Comes Around – A Guide To How Life REALLY Works” at Amazon or Audible
Kirkus Reviews says:
A stable, nonpreachy, objective voice makes the book stand apart from others in the genre. A successful guide that uses anecdotes of real human experiences to reveal powerful truths about life.
Caroline Ellison, Associate of FTX Founder Sam Bankman-Fried, Pleads Guilty to Criminal Charges
The Alameda Research ex-CEO and former FTX executive Gary Wang pleaded guilty for roles in fraud leading to exchange’s collapse
Two associates of FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried have pleaded guilty for their roles in fraud that contributed to the cryptocurrency exchange’s collapse and are cooperating with federal investigators.
Caroline Ellison, the former chief executive of Alameda Research, a trading firm tied to FTX, and Gary Wang, FTX’s former chief technology officer, both pleaded guilty to criminal offenses similar to those Mr. Bankman-Fried was charged with last week.
Damian Williams, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, announced the charges and plea agreements in a video posted online Wednesday night. Mr. Williams called for others who participated in alleged misconduct at FTX or Alameda to come forward.
“We are moving quickly and our patience is not eternal,” he said.
A plane carrying FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried leaves the Bahamas as he is being extradited to the U.S.PHOTO: JOE RAEDLE/GETTY IMAGES
The announcement came shortly after Mr. Bankman-Fried had been transferred to U.S. custody in the Bahamas, where he was arrested last week.
Ms. Ellison, 28 years old, pleaded guilty to seven counts, including wire fraud and conspiracy to commit securities fraud, according to her plea agreement, which was signed Monday. Mr. Wang, 29, pleaded guilty to four counts, including wire fraud.
Ilan Graff, a lawyer for Mr. Wang, said in a statement, “Gary has accepted responsibility for his actions and takes seriously his obligations as a cooperating witness.” An attorney for Ms. Ellison declined to comment.
The Securities and Exchange Commission and Commodity Futures Trading Commission also sued Ms. Ellison and Mr. Wang, alleging they committed civil securities and commodities fraud. Both agreed to settle the SEC’s and CFTC’s claims and to accept liability, with monetary penalties to be decided in the future, according to the regulators.
Mr. Bankman-Fried, 30, is expected to appear in federal court in Manhattan as soon as Thursday. Prosecutors have charged him with eight criminal counts, alleging he defrauded customers, lenders and investors, in addition to making illegal political donations.
Ms. Ellison, who graduated from Stanford University in 2016, was previously a trader at Jane Street, a quantitative-trading firm. She met Mr. Bankman-Fried at Jane Street, and after he left to found Alameda, she joined him. Ms. Ellison and Mr. Bankman-Fried were at times romantically involved, The Wall Street Journal has previously reported.
Mr. Wang worked as a software engineer at Google before co-founding Alameda and FTX. He claims to have built systems to aggregate airline fares across millions of flights at Google, according to an FTX presentation viewed by the Journal.
Messrs. Bankman-Fried and Wang are both graduates of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where they were members of the same coed living group, Epsilon Theta.
FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried is headed to New York for a possible court appearance on Thursday.PHOTO: REBECCA BLACKWELL/ASSOCIATED PRESS
According to their plea agreements, Ms. Ellison and Mr. Wang are expected to truthfully disclose information to investigators, provide requested evidence and appear in front of a grand jury or court proceeding if asked. In exchange, the government will inform the judge of the defendants’ assistance and request lesser sentences.
The SEC said Ms. Ellison, from 2019 to 2022, manipulated the price of FTT, a digital asset that FTX issued. Ms. Ellison did so at the direction of Mr. Bankman-Fried, according to the SEC. The price manipulation allowed Alameda to inflate the value of FTT that it held and used as collateral for undisclosed loans from FTX customers, the SEC said.
Mr. Bankman-Fried on at least two occasions became worried about the price of FTT dropping and told Ms. Ellison to have Alameda buy FTT, the SEC’s complaint says. Binance, a rival crypto exchange, was also a large holder of FTT tokens; its announcement in November that it would sell its FTT stake caused the price of the token to plummet, although Ms. Ellison had offered publicly to buy Binance’s holdings of FTT at $22 each.
The SEC alleged that FTT is a security, giving the agency authority to oversee how it was traded. FTX’s profits from selling FTT to investors helped fund the exchange’s growth and development, the SEC said.
Ms. Ellison was the co-CEO of Alameda from late 2021 until August, when she took the title exclusively. Like many of Mr. Bankman-Fried’s lieutenants, she worked in Hong Kong and the Bahamas. Though she was CEO, Mr. Bankman-Fried owned 90% of Alameda and Mr. Wang owned the other 10%, according to bankruptcy court filings.
Kirkus Reviews, the gold-standard for independent & accurate reviews, has this to say about
What Goes Around Comes Around:
A successful guide that uses anecdotes to reveal powerful truths about life.
The stable, positive, non-preachy and objective voice makes the book stand apart from others in the genre.
~ Kirkus Reviews
“I’ve read a number of books that focus on sharing a similar message, including “The Secret” by Rhonda Byrne, “The Answer” by John Assaraf & Murray Smith, “The Celestine Prophecy” by James Redfield, “Think and Grow Rich,” by Napoleon Hill, and I must say that I find Rob’s to be my favorite.” – Sheryl Woodhouse, founder of Livelihood Matters LLC
Two associates of FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried have pleaded guilty
Two associates of FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried have pleaded guilty
New research shows small gestures matter even more than we may think.
I wonder about when this train actually went off the rail and Balwani and Holmes both knew it. It reminds me somewhat of Bernie Madoff’s $20 Billion deception in that if Bernie had fessed up when his performance first went south and he tried to cover it up, only to make it worse, he might largely have been forgiven and returned to his original trading business. But he just couldn’t do that and as time went on…well we know the result.
Was there a similar trajectory for this pair? A time when they looked at each other and said, “Uh oh!” Not that it matters really. Somewhere along the way they knew what was going down and kept it going for as long as they could. Now have to face the music as eventually, always is the case. It is simply “The Law of Cause and Effect” unfolding. Hopefully for them there will be less tragic endings than Bernie. It depends on how they handle what they have wrought! We’ll see.