group of FTX Investors agreed to drop legal claims against Sam Bankman Freed.
In return, the paper said, the disgraced former crypto exchange CEO will cooperate in an investor lawsuit against other defendants stemming from the FTX collapse, including It is said that this includes various celebrities who received compensation for the project. court documents It was filed on Friday (April 19).
Reconciliation first report Published a few weeks after Bankman Fried by Bloomberg News sentenced to 25 years in prison For the fraud that led to the multi-billion dollar FTX collapse in November 2022.
Former FTX investors and customers are suing some of the people who supported the company during its best days, accusing them of facilitating the exchange's fraud.
According to the proposed settlement, the plaintiffs believe Bankman Freed has “knowledge and other information” that they believe is valuable in the case. As part of the agreement, Mr. Bankman Fried will also provide non-privileged documents listing his own assets and investments in artificial intelligence (AI) startup Anthropic, as well as an affidavit certifying that his net worth is negative. I plan to hand it over.
He also plans to hand over any information about the venture capital firms that invested in FTX, as well as the lawyers and accountants who worked for FTX.
Even before Bankman Fried was criminally charged, a group of investors had filed a lawsuit. FTX celebrity endorsement It alleges that the group, which includes Tom Brady, Gisele Bündchen and Shaquille O'Neal, violated securities laws and failed to conduct proper due diligence.
The lawsuit was filed in federal court in Miami in November 2022, days after FTX declared bankruptcy, after Bankman Freed used client funds for investments, real estate purchases and political contributions. This was several weeks before he was indicted.
Last week's settlement came just days after Bankman Freed appealed his conviction and sentence, part of a process that could take years.
Reuters reported on April 11 that Bankman Freed's former lawyer Mark Cohen, at a press conference on the same day, sentenced his former client to 25 years in prison for violating the Anti-Money Laundering Act, along with Binance founder Chao Changpeng. He pointed out that he argued that there was a discrepancy between the sentence and his 25-year sentence.probably will be Within 18 months.
The 25-year sentence was less than the 40 to 50 years prosecutors had sought, but it was far higher. 5-6 years Bankman Freed's lawyers pushed for this.
“At the end of the day, the criminal justice system only thrives when it is deemed fair,” Judge Lewis Kaplan said in announcing the sentence. “People need to feel it's fair or we'll go back to trial by combat. The punishment has to be commensurate with the seriousness of the crime. And this is a serious It was a crime.”
