Some FTX retail investors say they lost their entire savings in the 2022 collapse. NurPhoto/Getty Images
In a sentencing statement, prosecutors asked the judge to sentence Sam Bankman-Fried to up to 50 years in prison.
The statement includes statements from victims who say their lives have been upended by the FTX collapse.
One victim said he was deprived of the opportunity to break “intergenerational poverty” in his family.
This is a machine translation of an article from our US colleagues at Business Insider. It was automatically translated and checked by a real editor.
When FTX collapsed in 2022, some of the wealthiest people who had invested in the cryptocurrency exchange platform and had their names attached to the company lost millions of dollars.
NFL quarterback Tom Brady, who received a multimillion-dollar deal as FTX’s lead brand ambassador, lost an estimated $30 million after the collapse.
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Companies and venture capital firms also saw their money disappear. Sequoia Capital classified its $213.5 million investment as worthless. However, it assured investors in a letter that the damage was offset by $7.5 billion (about €6.8 billion) in realized and unrealized gains this year. Other VCs also spoke up and said: It’s not that bad.
However, the victims of the FTX collapse are not limited to wealthy investors and companies, as prosecutors noted in a recently published ruling. In it, she asked a federal judge to sentence disgraced FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried to 40 to 50 years in prison.
“The defendant victimized tens of thousands of people and companies on multiple continents over a period of several years,” prosecutors wrote.
Victims are said to have lost their entire savings
These faceless victims include, for example, a single mother, according to testimony released in court documents. She claimed she lost her life savings. One brother hoped to use the proceeds from his investment to help his sibling with his “disability.” And one partner said the losses had destabilized his family’s life.
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“The financial loss we suffered was significant. Not just financially, but also in the stability he gave our family. We were on the verge of losing our house. We struggled to make mortgage payments and maintain some semblance of normalcy for our child,” the victim wrote.
Many of these smaller investors don’t come close to the seven to nine figure investments that celebrities like Brady or VCs like Sequoia Capital are putting into FTX. They also have no winnings to fall back on.
The losses, some victims say in their statements, represent all the money they have saved for years. They depended on it to secure their own lives and those of their families.
One victim said he lived in Africa. The man said he bought three Bitcoins for his “family savings.” The investment in FTX was “hard-earned to break generational poverty,” according to court documents.
“Now you interfered and stole all this,” the victim wrote about SBF. “They single-handedly destroyed an opportunity of their own making.”
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Customers and creditors should receive full refunds
At the time of the collapse, FTX’s bankruptcy filings said the exchange might owe money to about a million creditors. Bankruptcy lawyers identified a $9.5 billion shortfall in cryptocurrencies and cash in 2023. It must be paid back to customers.
In February, lawyers for FTX debtors said in a Delaware bankruptcy court that customers and creditors can expect a full refund, as “Axios“ reported.
Read the original article Business Insider