Despite objections from the disgraced FTX founder’s legal team, the US Department of Justice (DOJ) has officially seized shares of popular trading app Robinhood linked to Sam Bankman-Fried.
Prosecutors with the DOJ Civil Division’s Commercial Litigation branch inform the bankruptcy court in the district of New Jersey in a filing dated January 6th that Robinhood shares worth over $456 million linked to the former crypto titan are now in the custody of the US government.
“The United States seized 55,273,469 shares of Robinhood Markets Inc. stock and $20,746,713.67 in US currency from an account at ED&F Man Capital Markets Inc. in response to judicially authorised seizure warrants issued in the Southern District of New York.”
According to the filing, the seized assets are property involved in money laundering and wire fraud criminal statute violations and are not property of the bankruptcy estate.
After failing to meet its customers’ withdrawal requests, FTX filed for bankruptcy in November.
The DOJ’s seizure comes as Bankman-Fried faces an eight-count indictment for alleged misappropriation of billions of dollars in FTX customer funds.
Bankman-Fried claims that he and FTX chief technology officer Gary Wang borrowed funds from FTX sister firm Alameda Research to fund Emergent Fidelity Technologies, which purchased the Robinhood shares, in an affidavit filed with the Eastern Caribbean Supreme Court on December 12th. 90% of the shell company is owned by Bankman-Fried.
Bankman-attorneys Fried’s argue that Emergent is not involved in FTX’s insolvency and should not be included in the bankruptcy proceedings. They also claim that the former crypto billionaire requires the funds to fund his legal defence.
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