Sam Bankman-Fried Arrested in Bahamas as U.S. Files FTX Charges

In his remarks prepared for a US House hearing that Bankman-Fried was scheduled to appear at on Tuesday, he offered a blunt assessment of his plight.

“I would like to start by formally stating under oath: I f—-ked up,” Bankman-Fried said in draft copy of remarks obtained by Bloomberg News.

Prior to the arrest and long before his empire collapsed into bankruptcy, federal prosecutors in Manhattan had already been looking into FTX as part of broader sweep of exchanges and potential anti-money laundering violations under the Bank Secrecy Act.

The investigation, led by the Complex Frauds and Cybercrime Unit, took a different trajectory after FTX’s catastrophic implosion.

Prosecutors were closely examining whether hundreds of millions of dollars were improperly transferred to the Bahamas around the time of FTX’s Nov. 11 bankruptcy filing in Delaware, according to a person familiar with the matter.

They were also digging into whether FTX broke the law by transferring funds to Alameda Research, the bankrupt investment firm also founded by Bankman-Fried, Bloomberg reported previously.

Last week, prosecutors, the FBI, Department of Justice officials and FTX’s new CEO and restructuring expert John Jay Ray III, who is also now FTX’s CEO, met at SDNY’s headquarters in downtown Manhattan. Potential charges were not discussed at that meeting, according to a person familiar with the conversation.

– With assistance from Allyson Versprille, Gillian Tan, Max Chafkin and Emily Wilkins.

Pictured: Sam Bankman-Fried. (Photo: Bloomberg)