Tag • #cryptocurrencies

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‘He knew it was wrong’: Sam Bankman-Fried sentenced to 25 years in prison over FTX fraud

news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Thursday, 28 March - 18:38

Judge orders disgraced crypto mogul to forfeit $11bn in assets and says he showed no remorse for his crimes

Sam Bankman-Fried, the disgraced cryptocurrency mogul who perpetrated one of the largest financial frauds in history, has been sentenced to 25 years in prison and ordered to forfeit $11bn in assets. His lawyer reiterated a pledge to appeal the sentence the same day.

The judge, Lewis Kaplan, issued the penalty in a Manhattan courtroom on Thursday. Bankman-Fried, the former chief executive of the now-bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange FTX, was convicted of fraud and conspiracy to launder money late last year.

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Sam Bankman-Fried is going to prison. The crypto industry isn’t any better for it

news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Thursday, 28 March - 16:00

There have been no changes since the ex-mogul’s conviction as lawmakers fail to pass regulations to protect the public

There is a palpable feeling of relief in the cryptocurrency industry. Evangelists are preaching the good news that the industry has been purged of the Sam Bankman-Frieds, the Alex Mashinskys , the Do Kwons and the Changpeng Zhaos of the world. They proclaim that crypto can finally ascend from its purgatorial, “wild west” days to become a respectable sector of the financial world blessed by regulators and speculators alike.

That exultant attitude has contributed to surging cryptocurrency prices, which surpassed previous all-time highs in the weeks leading up to Bankman-Fried’s sentencing of 25 years in prison on Thursday.

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Sam Bankman-Fried to be sentenced for multibillion-dollar crypto fraud – live

news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Thursday, 28 March - 12:10

Former CEO of now bankrupt FTX cryptocurrency exchange faces more than 100 years in prison if given maximum penalty

In mid-March, federal prosecutors requested that judge Lewis Kaplan sentence Bankman-Fried to at least four decades in prison. The maximum penalty he could face would amount to more than 100 years.

“His life in recent years has been one of unmatched greed and hubris; of ambition and rationalization; and courting risk and gambling repeatedly with other people’s money,” the US attorneys in Manhattan wrote. “And even now Bankman-Fried refuses to admit what he did was wrong.”

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Sam Bankman-Fried will grow old in jail. But don’t forget those who basked in his orbit | Aditya Chakrabortty

news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Thursday, 28 March - 06:00

If the high-rollers surrounding the disgraced FTX founder had any qualms about taking his money, they didn’t show it

Later today, a man who has recently turned 32 will be hauled in front of a Manhattan judge. Already convicted of huge fraud , he knows he’s going to prison. The only question is for how long. If the US government gets its way, he will not emerge before his 80th birthday.

This is the final disgrace of Sam Bankman-Fried. The judge, politicians and the world’s press will declare him one of the biggest swindlers in American history. They will note how within three years he built a marketplace for digital currencies, or crypto, that was worth around $32bn – and made himself the world’s richest person under 30. Still it wasn’t enough. He spent perhaps $8bn of his customers’ savings on luxury homes, risky investments and whatever else took his fancy.

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‘Old-fashioned embezzlement’: where did all of FTX’s money go?

news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Wednesday, 27 March - 13:00

Sam Bankman-Fried oversaw its collapse – now the crypto firm is in bankruptcy proceedings as contentious as his fraud trial

Sam Bankman-Fried, former CEO of the bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange FTX , presided over a spectacular collapse that cost his customers billions of dollars. He argues in court filings that anyone owed money by FTX “will eventually be paid in full”. The US government says he’s living in a fantasy land.

Last week, FTX’s caretaker, John Ray III, appointed to oversee the company’s bankruptcy proceedings, reminded the court that Bankman-Fried had masterminded a “colossal fraud”, lived a “life of delusion”, and called Bankman-Fried’s lawyers’ claim that no one had been harmed as “categorically, callously, and demonstrably false”.

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Crypto and the US government are headed for a decisive showdown

news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Tuesday, 9 August, 2022 - 13:52

Crypto and the US government are headed for a decisive showdown

Enlarge (credit: Elena Lacey | Getty Images)

If you have paid casual attention to crypto news over the past few years, you probably have a sense that the crypto market is unregulated—a tech-driven Wild West in which the rules of traditional finance do not apply.

If you were Ishan Wahi, however, you would probably not have that sense.

Wahi worked at Coinbase, a leading crypto exchange, where he had a view into which tokens the platform planned to list for trading—an event that causes those assets to spike in value. According to the US Department of Justice, Wahi used that knowledge to buy those assets before the listings, then sell them for big profits. In July, the DOJ announced that it had indicted Wahi, along with two associates, in what it billed as the “first ever cryptocurrency insider trading tipping scheme.” If convicted, the defendants could face decades in federal prison.

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Man robbed of 16 bitcoin hunts down suspects, sues their parents

Tim De Chant · news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Friday, 27 August, 2021 - 18:27

Man robbed of 16 bitcoin hunts down suspects, sues their parents

Enlarge (credit: KeremYucel / iStock )

Andrew Schober was almost all-in on cryptocurrency. In 2018, 95 percent of his net wealth was invested in the digital tokens, which he hoped he could sell later to buy a home and support his family.

But then disaster struck. Schober had downloaded an app called “Electrum Atom” after clicking a link on Reddit, mistakenly thinking it was a bitcoin wallet. Instead, it was malware that allowed hackers to steal 16.4552 bitcoin when he tried moving some of his tokens. At the time, they were worth nearly $200,000. Today, they would be worth over $750,000.

Distressed, Schober didn’t eat or sleep for days. He vowed to track down the culprits. After years of private investigations costing more than $10,000, Schober thinks he has found the thieves, and he’s suing their parents to get his bitcoin back. Krebs on Security first reported on the lawsuit.

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