A storm of allegations rained down on FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried on Thursday, ranging from new claims about financial impropriety to an accusation that he leaked his ex’s diary entries to The New York Times.
First, in a lawsuit filed in Delaware court on Thursday, FTX claimed that Bankman-Fried is funding his legal bills with misappropriated cash: Last year, he allegedly sent his dad $10 million, the company said—money that is now being used to pay his lawyers. The allegations echo earlier reporting by Forbes.
Separately, prosecutors in the Southern District of New York sent a letter to the judge presiding over his case on Thursday, accusing Bankman-Fried of attempting “to interfere with a fair trial by an impartial jury.” According to the memo, he gave documents to a Times reporter that sought to discredit his ex-girlfriend Caroline Ellison, who once ran Bankman-Fried’s crypto hedge fund Alameda Research. (Ellison pleaded guilty to criminal charges in December and is cooperating with prosecutors in their case against him.)
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“The defendant’s purpose in sharing these materials is plain,” prosecutors wrote. “By selectively sharing certain private documents,” they continued, he sought to utilize the press in order to taint his forthcoming jury pool and to paint Ellison as “a jilted lover who perpetrated these crimes alone.”
A spokesperson for Bankman-Fried did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Prosecutors further alleged that Bankman-Fried likely shared the documents without his defense attorneys’ knowledge. Instead, they said, he passed them to a Times reporter in person.
The Times article, published Thursday, centered on Ellison’s “personal writings,” some of which she entered into Google documents or sent to Bankman-Fried himself. In one entry, she described feeling “pretty unhappy and overwhelmed with my job,” adding, “At the end of the day I can’t wait to go home and turn off my phone and have a drink and get away from it all.”
The article noted that Ellison pocketed a tiny fraction of the payments and loans received by her male counterparts; Bankman-Fried allegedly pocketed $2.2 billion, while she collected just $6 million, the Times said. Her case isn’t quite a sob story, however. Last year, Ellison reportedly “paid herself [$22.5 million] in a single bonus payment despite knowing about massive holes in FTX’s finances,” according to legal filings.
Bankman-Fried’s younger brother, Gabe, was also roped into the hubbub this week. Thursday’s lawsuit claimed that he had considered using FTX assets to buy the island nation of Nauru, in Micronesia, where he planned to construct a doomsday bunker and a laboratory “for human genetic enhancement.”
Sam Bankman-Fried’s first trial is expected to begin in October. If convicted, he faces decades of possible prison time. Until then, prosecutors have asked the judge to restrict his “extrajudicial statements,” lest more scandalous revelations land in the press.
