The numbers are not confirmed, but allegedly, Sam Bankman-Fried‘s crypto exchange FTX was missing about $10 billion last time. Much money was also spent on private purposes and luxury real estate. According to a Reuters report, FTX, its senior executives, and the parents of Bankman-Fried bought at least 19 properties worth nearly $121 million in the Bahamas over the past two years, official property records show.
Most of FTX‘s purchases were luxury beachfront homes, including seven condominiums in an expensive resort community called Albany, costing almost $72 million. FTX Property Holdings Ltd, an FTX unit, bought 15 properties worth nearly $100 million in 2021 and 2022. The most expensive purchase was a $30 million penthouse at the Albany, a resort where Tiger Woods hosts a golf tournament yearly.
The deeds show these properties were to be used as “residence for key personnel” of the company.
The documents for a property with beach access in Old Fort Bay, a gated community, show Bankman-Fried’s parents, Stanford University law professors Joseph Bankman and Barbara Fried, as signatories. When asked by Reuters why the couple decided to buy a vacation home in the Bahamas and how it was paid for, a spokesman for the professors said only that they had been trying to return the property to FTX.
Most recently, newly appointed FTX CEO John Ray had spoken of an incredible mess at FTX that he had not seen before. SBF itself had also publicly admitted that accounting at FTX was a mess. Legally, using customer funds for other purposes is embezzlement and possibly fraud.
