In early September 2022, Sam Bankman-Fried, former CEO of FTX, had an emotional conversation with FTX lieutenant Nishad Singh about how his now-shuttered crypto hedge fund had siphoned approximately $13 billion from his now-bankrupt crypto exchange. “I was blindsided and horrified,” Singh, former head of engineering at FTX, testified on Monday.
But just weeks after his conversation with Singh, and less than two months before FTX collapsed, Bankman-Fried, according to court documents, was ping-ponging through New York City as he hobnobbed with some of the world’s most influential and wealthy personalities, including former President Bill Clinton, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, and Yasir Al-Rumayyan, chairperson of oil behemoth Saudi Aramco.
