US Seeks to Seize $18.5M in Crypto Linked to Sam Bankman-Fried's FTX Case

The United States is still pursuing the seizure of cryptocurrency assets linked to Sam Bankman-Fried, over a year after his conviction for orchestrating a large-scale fraud at his FTX exchange.

In a court filing made on Tuesday in New York, prosecutors sought to confiscate digital currency from an account allegedly tied to bribes paid to Chinese officials prior to FTX’s collapse. As of December 12, 2023, this account held $8.6 million, but due to a surge in value over the past 11 months, its worth has now risen to approximately $18.5 million.

Bankman-Fried is currently serving a 25-year prison term for misappropriating billions of dollars from customer deposits at FTX, using them for luxury real estate, political contributions, and high-risk investments. Although he was also charged with bribing foreign officials, that specific charge, which would have required a second trial, was dropped following his conviction by a jury last year.

He is presently appealing his conviction and sentence. Prosecutors had previously claimed in the now-dismissed charge that in early 2021, Chinese law enforcement froze accounts belonging to Alameda Research, a trading firm associated with FTX, on two Chinese cryptocurrency exchanges. Allegedly, Bankman-Fried authorized a $40 million bribe to release $1 billion held in these Chinese accounts.

The account in question holds various cryptocurrencies, including Solana, Cardano, Ripple, Internet Computer, and Avalanche. The significant increase in the account's value is largely attributed to a substantial rise in the price of Solana, which is currently the fourth-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, according to CoinMarketCap.com.

The case is titled US v. All Assets and Funds Formerly Contained in Binance Account ID 804093810, case number 24-cr-08559, in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York (Manhattan).