Some banks began rejecting wires to or from Alameda the same
year that the cryptocurrency exchange scrambled to access the US banking
system, the report said.
Federal prosecutors have alleged that Bankman-Fried stole
billions of dollars in customer funds to plug losses at Alameda. FTX, which
filed for bankruptcy in November after Bankman-Fried resigned as CEO, has
estimated that approximately $8.7 billion in customer assets were
misappropriated from the exchange.
Bankman-Fried has pleaded not guilty to 13 counts of fraud
and conspiracy. He has previously said that when FTX did not have a bank
account, some customers wired money to Alameda and were credited on FTX.
Bankman-Fried did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the
report.
In 2020, certain banks working with Alameda pressed the firm
on its wire transfers, according to the report.
One bank representative wrote to Alameda about references to
FTX in the company's wire activity and asked whether the account was being used
to settle trades on FTX. An Alameda employee responded that while customers
"occasionally confuse FTX and Alameda," all wires through the account
were to settle trades with Alameda, according to the report.
The Alameda employee's response was false, FTX said on
Monday. In 2020 alone, one of Alameda's accounts received more than $250
billion in deposits from FTX customers and more than $4 billion from other
Alameda accounts that were funded in part by customer deposits, the report
said.
Bankman-Fried, a 31-year-old former billionaire, rode a boom
in digital assets to accumulate an estimated net worth of $26 billion, and
became an influential political and philanthropic donor before FTX declared
bankruptcy. © Reuters