Sam Bankman-Fried arrested in the Bahamas
STORY: Police in the Bahamas have arrested Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of the bankrupt crypto exchange FTX.
Monday's arrest comes after criminal charges were filed against the 30-year-old in the United States.
The New York Times reported late in the day that Bankman-Fried faces charges of fraud and money laundering.
It marks a stunning fall from grace for the crypto tycoon who founded the exchange in 2019,
and had a net worth that Forbes pegged a year ago at $26.5 billion.
The attorney general's office for The Bahamas said it proceeded with the arrest after receiving formal confirmation of charges against Bankman-Fried.
Last month, FTX filed for bankruptcy after traders rushed to withdraw $6 billion from the platform in just 72 hours.
The liquidity crunch came after Bankman-Fried secretly moved $10 billion dollars of FTX customer funds to its affiliated trading firm Alameda Research, Reuters reported.
In a series of interviews and public appearances in late November and December,
Bankman-Fried admitted to mistakes and management failures at FTX.
In a November interview at a New York Times event, he said that quote "I didn't ever try to commit fraud."
And he told Reuters the company did not 'secretly transfer' but rather 'misread its quote 'confusing internal labeling.'
Mark Cohen, a lawyer for Bankman-Fried, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Bankman-Fried's arrest comes after Reuters reported that lawyers with the U.S. Justice Department...
....believe they have enough evidence to levy charge charges against Binance,
the world's largest crypto exchange, as well as some of its top executives.
