‘Old-fashioned embezzlement’: where did all of FTX’s money go?

Sam Bankman-Fried, co-founder of FTX, departs from court in New York, on 16 February 2023. Photograph: Bloomberg/Getty Images

Sam Bankman-Fried, former CEO of the bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange FTX, presided over a spectacular collapse that cost his customers billions of dollars. He argues in court filings that anyone owed money by FTX “will eventually be paid in full”. The US government says he’s living in a fantasy land. He was sentenced to 25 years in prison on Thursday.

Last week, FTX’s caretaker, John Ray III, appointed to oversee the company’s bankruptcy proceedings, reminded the court that Bankman-Fried had masterminded a “colossal fraud”, lived a “life of delusion”, and called Bankman-Fried’s lawyers’ claim that no one had been harmed as “categorically, callously, and demonstrably false”.