On Thursday, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) searched the Washington D.C. home of Ryan Salame, a former executive of the now-bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange FTX, according to a report from The New York Times.
Salame, who formerly co-led FTX's Bahamas operation, is under investigation as part of the ongoing probe into the collapse of the cryptocurrency exchange.
Authorities are looking into $24 million in political donations that Salame made during last year's midterm elections, and allege that the majority of the total $90 million donated by ex-FTX employees—including to the campaign of Republican Representative George Santos—was taken from customer funds.
Shaq Finally Served in FTX Lawsuit After Months of ‘Running’, Say Lawyers
Shaquille O’Neal has finally been served papers in a lawsuit over his role in promoting FTX after lawyers accused the former basketball star of hiding from them. Alongside fellow high-profile endorsers such as Tom Brady and Larry David, O’Neal was named as a defendant in the suit filed last November in a Florida federal district court. It alleges that the celebrities “actively participated” in FTX’s offer and sale of unregistered securities. UPDATE: Plaintiffs in the billion $ FTX class action...
Decrypt contacted the attorney for Ryan Salame, Jason Linder, who declined to comment on the investigation.
Salame's wealth increased substantially during the crypto market boom, as he reportedly obtained $87 million in bonuses and loans from FTX's sister company, trading firm Alameda Research.
After the collapse of FTX in November, court documents obtained by the Wall Street Journal revealed that Salame—then chairman of FTX Digital—tipped off Bahamian authorities to the cryptocurrency exchange using customer funds to cover losses by Alameda.
According to The New York Times report, prosecutors allege that Bankman-Fried recruited executives—including Salame, who joined the firm in 2021—to act as proxies for his company and donate tens of millions of dollars to Republican and Democratic candidates alike.
gm: Arthur Hayes Says Crypto Failures Are A Sign of The System Cleansing Itself
Arthur Hayes says the speed at which projects like Terra grow and implode is a feature of the crypto industry, not a bug. He founded crypto exchange Bitmex in 2014 and then became the original crypto bad boy. In 2021 the DOJ charged him in with violating the U.S. Bank Secrecy Act for not implementing an anti-money laundering program at Bitmex. He plead guilty and was sentenced to two years probation and six months of home detention. In fact, he was still sporting an ankle bracelet on a recent cover of New York Magazine. Now he's living in Singapore, offering up his views on the crypto industry with long form, meme-filled essays, and still thinks the crypto industry will save investors from what he calls a broken banking system. "I don't care if you're capitalist or you're a communist. Everybody put on a lot of debt. We've passed the point where that debt is becoming useful," he said. "And therefore everyone is going to take an L unless they get some crypto or some gold—some hard asset that's outside of the traditional banking system."
During a so-called “PR tour” following FTX's descent into bankruptcy last year, Bankman-Fried said in an interview that he donated approximately the same amount to both parties.
"All my Republican donations were dark," Bankman-Fried said, citing the Citizens United U.S. Supreme Court case that protected political donations by corporations and unions, raising concerns about corporate money on politics.
"In practice, no one can fathom the idea that someone actually gave dark [money]," he said, adding he hid the donations to avoid public scrutiny.
Before its collapse, FTX had a valuation of $32 billion. FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried faces life in prison on multiple charges of money laundering, conspiracy, and wire fraud.
