The erstwhile entourage of arrested crypto billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried is facing fresh allegations from key US federal organizations.
The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) have filed new fraud allegations against former Alameda Research CEO Caroline Ellison and former FTX co-founder Gary Wang.
The SEC and CFTC allegations come after the two pleaded guilty to federal fraud charges issued by the US Department of Justice (DOJ) earlier on December 22.
According to the SEC, Ellison and Wang were charged for their roles in the “multiyear plan to deceive equity investors in FTX,” and the SEC is also looking into whether other securities laws were broken.
The SEC claims that Ellison, under the supervision of former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, aided the scam by manipulating the price of the FTX Token FTT. tickers are down $0.85., which is stated in the paper as a crypto security token. The alleged manipulation was carried out by “buying substantial quantities on the open market to prop up its price” between 2019 and 2022. Amendments to the CFTC’s allegations were made in December. Ellison and Wang will now be identified as defendants in the FTX Trading and Alameda Research cases.
Ellison is now charged in the revised complaint with “fraud and significant misrepresentation in connection with the selling of digital asset commodities in interstate commerce.” Wang, the former FTX executive, has been charged with “fraud in connection with the interstate sale of digital asset commodities.”
Concerning the behavior that led to the accusations, the SEC and CFTC also allege that Wang wrote the software code that allowed Alameda to drain customer monies from FTX, allowing Ellison to misappropriate those funds for Alameda’s trading activity.
Former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried is also said to have arrived in the United States after being extradited from the Bahamas on fraud allegations brought by the United States government. The indictment against SBF was signed by the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Damian Williams, and it includes eight counts.
SBF is being investigated by the Justice Department, as well as the SEC and CFTC, for scamming investors and lenders. The former crypto billionaire was arrested by Royal Bahamas police on December 12, and his initial bail application was denied in a Bahamian court.
