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Bankrupt cryptocurrency company FTX filed 23 lawsuits on Friday against Anthony Scaramucci (pictured above), his hedge fund SkyBridge Capital, and other organizations including Crypto.com and the Mark Zuckerberg-backed lobbying group Fwd.us.
These lawsuits are an attempt to recover money for FTX’s creditors after the company collapsed. FTX claims that the funds targeted in these lawsuits were part of an “influence-buying campaign” by founder and CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, conducted while the company was struggling to meet its cash flow needs.
“These ‘investments’ conveyed little or no benefit to the debtors and instead only served to shore up Bankman Fried’s position in the worlds of politics and traditional finance,” which he then attempted to leverage as “potential sources of equity,” the lawsuit alleges. Investing in FTX to fill the hole in the balance sheet, thus keeping his scheme afloat.
Since the company went bankrupt, FTX executives have been convicted of crimes including fraud and money laundering. Bankman-Fried was sentenced to 25 years in prison and is currently appealing his conviction.
In the case of SkyBridge and Scaramucci (the financier who briefly served as White House communications director under Donald Trump), FTX Announce It was acquiring a 30% stake in SkyBridge in September 2022, just a few months before FTX’s bankruptcy and Bankman-Fried’s arrest.
According to the lawsuit, FTX also paid $12 million to sponsor Scaramucci SALT conferences and invested $10 million in the SkyBridge Coin Fund. In return, FTX alleges that Scaramucci took Bankman-Fried on a “whirlwind tour of the United States and the Middle East” to pitch potential investors, where Scaramucci “was so invested in the success of Bankman-Fried’s fundraising efforts that he loaned Bankman-Fried his own fund.” suit and tie before their meetings so that Bankman Fried would not show up to important meetings wearing his signature shorts and shirt.
Meanwhile, Fwd.us’ lawsuit describes payments made by Alameda Research, a sister company to FTX, to Fwd.us as “part of an integrated plan by FTX insiders to extract money from FTX Group’s creditors and enhance their personal reputation at the expense of “Creditors.”
SkyBridge and Fwd.us did not immediately respond to TechCrunch’s request for comment.
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