FTX's 'More Than 1 Million Creditors' Include Netflix, DoorDash, and Airbnb
The FTX creditor list also named the Miami-based Basketball Properties LTD as a creditor. FTX bought the rights to the home of the Miami Heat’s home arena for $135 million in 2021. The Miami-Dade County government has since terminated that 19-year contract.
The ongoing Chapter 11 bankruptcy of FTX is still trying to claw back the billions of dollars needed to make customers and investors whole. One problem with this lofty goal is the nearly 10 million FTX customers who still had funds on the exchange before its collapse are apparently being lumped in with FTX employees’ old lunch bills.
The creditor list has been under court seal for three months, but Delaware district Judge John Dorsey finally told the FTX lawyers to file it on Wednesday. Previous bankruptcy docs have speculated there could be 1 million creditors among more than 100 different companies. The list doesn’t make the mess surrounding the failed crypto exchange any less confusing. It may even point to just how messy the FTX books were before the company finally imploded last November.
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The company has been going through a lengthy and convoluted bankruptcy since November, after investigations revealed exchange CEO Sam Bankman-Fried was funneling customer’s crypto over to his hedge fund Alameda Research. Bankman-Fried is currently awaiting trial over criminal allegations of fraud and conspiracy, and FTX has barely managed to make up $5.5 billion in assets from a company that was once valued at $32 billion at its peak.
The creditor list doesn’t give an indication as to how much each entity is owed, but the 116-page document includes an immense list of names, though a good number of those listed on the document were redacted. Some of those listed are rather strange to see on a list of people owed. There’s the names of known FTX investors like Tom Brady and his ex-wife, fashion model Gisele Bündchen, though the latter was listed under the Gisele Bündchen Charitable Giving, her charity foundation.
Mercedes-Benz was also listed multiple times. FTX had sponsored its F1 team, though the car company has since terminated that partnership and removed the FTX logo from its vehicle. Moonstone Bank was another creditor listed. The Washington State-based bank was trying to set up a crypto and cannabis operation out of a small town on the border of Idaho.
Among the names are a few other notable entities, including Modulo Capital, a small crypto trading firm. That company has received intense scrutiny from federal prosecutors for the hundreds of millions of dollars Bankman-Fried gave it over the years, according to anonymous sources quoted by The New York Times. The new leaders of FTX are trying to drag those millions back from Modulo as part of its attempt to make creditors whole.
And then there’s the head scratching entities that FTX is listing as a creditor. Netflix is listed as one of the entities alongside The Wall Street Journal. There’s the names of the Alabama Department of Revenue listed several times alongside several other state agencies. Major tech companies like Meta, Microsoft, and Apple are also listed alongside the names of individual Apple IT staff.
Some of those entities on the list could simply be expenditures which have become inexplicably wrapped up in the company’s creditor list. DoorDash and UberEats are together listed over a dozen times all over the world, in places like San Francisco, Toronto, Canada, and Melbourne, Australia. Airbnb is listed alongside several luxury hotels in places like Austin, Chicago, as well as Nassau in the Bahamas where FTX was based.
As pointed out by CoinTelegraph, former FTX employees have openly talked about the ludicrous amount of money staff spent on luxury homes, apartments, private chefs, massages, and more.
11. The half dozen condos leased/purchased by FTX for free employee access... In addition to the expensed stays in luxury hotels. pic.twitter.com/RqCVfjm7eX
— Dani Cloud (@daniiicloud) December 14, 2022
So it’s unclear if FTX simply hasn’t paid its Netflix bill, if the exchange had any marketing deals with these other companies, or if Bankman-Fried’s darling just listed out employees’ expenditures because the company kept such bad books. John Ray III, the person in charge of handling FTX through its bankruptcy, has said he has no confidence in FTX’s balance sheets.
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