New York (CNN) Four more criminal charges have been announced against federal prosecutors Sam Bankman-RoastThe founder of crypto trading platform FTX is expanding his potential liability in what authorities allege is a billion-dollar fraud.
Bankman-Fried was indicted in December on an eight-count indictment. On Thursday, an indictment was unsealed by adding new charges for a total of 12-counts, including conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money laundering business, conspiracy to commit bank fraud and securities fraud.
Bankman-Fried, who Issued in $250 million bond, previously pleaded not guilty to charges announced in December, including one count of conspiracy to violate campaign finance laws. At the time he was charged with conspiracy and wire fraud and multiple counts of conspiring to make political donations through straw donors in violation of US campaign finance laws.
The FTX founder made more than 300 illegal political contributions through straw donors, including tens of millions of dollars paid by Alameda and FTX funds, according to the newly unsealed indictment.
Although SBF personally became one of the most publicly declared political donors to the 2022 midterm elections, he fraudulently made donations ahead of the midterms in the names of two FTC administrators to increase his influence, court filings state.
Bankman-Fried strategized to make political donations across the political spectrum, not wanting to appear left-leaning or publicly associate her name with Republican candidates, so she would make some contributions in the names of her executives, according to the indictment. I thought it was great for Bill.
SBF wanted to keep Republican contributions “dark,” so those donations were made through an FTX executive identified in the indictment only as CC-2, who publicly aligned himself with conservatives.
Bankman-Fried conspired to contribute “at least one million dollars” to a super PAC supporting a candidate running for United States Congress and appearing to be associated with pro-LGBTQ issues, the indictment states.
That contribution was made in the name of another FTX executive because “no one in FTX ‘trusts’ [who was] The new indictment says that a bi/homosexual person “can make a contribution”.
Despite the employee’s discomfort with the situation, a political consultant working at SBF told the executive, identified in the indictment as CC-1, “Normally, you give a lot of awareness because you are the center-left face of our spending. Transactional motives.”
On another occasion, shortly before the 2022 midterm elections, an FTX employee was directed by that FTX executive to wire $107,000 from Bankman-Fried’s account to the New York State Democratic Committee.
The executive eventually became one of the largest Democratic donors in the 2022 midterm elections, promoting Bankman-Fried’s agenda with donations the executive would not have made on their own, the filing says.
In November 2022, before the impending allegations, the executive expressed concern in chat messages to SBF about “perhaps 80m” of “donations/individuals/etc” going through his bank account in his name. The two discussed plans to hide the wire transfers on the company’s books, but ultimately never made the transactions that would have further obscured the campaign finance scheme, the indictment says.
The indictment alleges that SBF orchestrated a political contribution scheme with co-conspirators in an auto-delete messaging chat called “donation processing.”
Donations were made with cash from Alameda bank accounts, including FTX customer funds, which were then transferred to the personal accounts of the straw donors who made the contributions. Outbound transfers were hidden in internal company records as expenses or credits to those executives.
No other co-conspirators were charged in the new indictment, unsealed Thursday.
It is not yet clear when SBF will stand trial on the four new charges listed in the 12-count indictment.
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