Prosecutors Discover Out SBF Held $50 Million in Tiny Rural Financial institution

• Roughly $50 million was seized from Bankman-Fried’s Farmington State Checking account.
• The financial institution was the US’s Twenty sixth-smallest out of round 4,800, earlier than Bankman-Fried had invested in it.
• Alameda Analysis, Bankman’s agency, took a stake within the financial institution and rebranded it “Moonstone”.

In response to a courtroom submitting revealed on Friday, public prosecutors seized $49,999,500 from Sam Bankman-Fried, the defamed CEO of FTX, on January 4, 2023, in an effort to forfeit practically $700 million in property.

The quantity was taken from an account created within the dad or mum firm of Farmington State Financial institution, Washington. FTX had invested $11.5 million in March final yr, via a subsidiary, doing enterprise beneath the identify Alameda Analysis, on this state checking account which had raised a number of questions on the time.

Earlier than the time of Bankman-Fried’s funding, the financial institution was little recognized and had been the Twenty sixth-smallest financial institution out of round 4,800 banks within the US, with solely three staff. As per a New York Instances report from November, the financial institution specialised in agricultural loans to farmers and didn’t supply on-line banking or bank cards initially.

After Bankman-Fried took a stake within the financial institution and rebranded it as “Moonstone” the financial institution had grown to a web price twice to what it initially was. Listed as “Moonstone On-line” till just lately, the financial institution didn’t declare any direct point out of cryptocurrencies. It mentioned it had 32 staff and a $115 million valuation” according to different comparable expertise banks and trust-banks startups.”

Federal prosecutors allege that he used FTX clients’ cash to construct Alameda. The courtroom report additionally reveals that they’ve seized simply over $100 million in an account with Silvergate Capital and $21 million with the brokerage agency ED&F Man Capital Markets.

Bankman-Fried additionally had 55 million shares of Robinhood property seized, price $526 million at Friday’s closing bell, and is being investigated for crypto and money held in three Binance accounts.

The prosecutors are working to trace down property held by Bankman-Fried, who pleaded not responsible to eight costs of fraud earlier this month and is scheduled to face trial in October.