Bankruptcy advisors to collapsed crypto exchange FTX passed customer information to the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), according to court records.
A number of FBI offices—including Philadelphia and Oakland—have received client transaction data, consultancy Alvarez & Marsal documents show. Bloomberg first reported the news.
The documents reveal that feds made the request to sift through the data to “investigate all transactions and customer accounts.” But the court records, made public yesterday, do not show details of just how much information federal agents received.
Customer privacy has been a hot topic since the collapse of FTX last year. Lawyers repeatedly blocked attempts from major news outlets—including the New York Times and Dow Jones & Company—to reveal customer names.
They argued that former customers of the collapsed crypto platform could be subject to scams and identity theft if their names were revealed.
FTX swiftly collapsed last November—sending shockwaves through an already battered crypto industry.
The crypto brand’s co-founder and ex-boss Sam Bankman-Fried was arrested a month after the exchange collapsed and prosecutors said he criminally mismanaged the exchange and lost billions of dollars in client money in the process.
And prosecutors were right: a jury on Thursday found Bankman-Fried guilty of seven criminal charges—including fraud and money laundering.
FTX was one of the most recognizable brands in the space and Bankman-Fried cosied up with politicians, celebrities and even donated to Democrats and Republicans to try and influence crypto policy.
But it was all ultimately a front to get rich, according to prosecutors, and the brand quickly and unexpectedly went bust because he and his team criminally mismanaged the digital asset behemoth.
Edited by Andrew Hayward