Federal authorities seized $700 million from SBF in January
Sam Bankman-Fried told the whole world he had less than $100,000 left to his name before the end of 2022. However, a Friday court filing reveals that the U.S. Federal authorities, namely the Department of Justice, seized in the neighbourhood of $700 million from accounts linked to the disgraced founder.
The main part of this seizure is of course the Robinhood shares seized at the beginning of the month, worth at the time $525 million. SBF is trying to reclaim those shares as he needs them to pay for the large teams of lawyers he hired for his defense in both his criminal and civil cases.
The court filing reveals that the DOJ seized last week around $100 million in cash from accounts at Silvergate Bank, associated with FTX Digital Markets, the Bahamas branch of the exchange, and Sam Bankman-Fried. Silvergate Bank reported a loss of $1 billion over the last quarter of 2022.
Another seizure of nearly $50 million had been operated in another account linked to FTX Digital Markets at Moonstone Bank. The Department of Justice is also looking to seize crypto assets they have located in three Binance accounts related to SBF. But the amounts in those accounts has yet to be disclosed.
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