Sam Bankman-Fried blamed Caroline Ellison for FTX collapse' > 자유게시판

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The founder of failed crypto exchange blamed his ex-girlfriend when the scale of the company's $11billion debts became clear.

Court documents showed that wrote to his male colleagues that Caroline Ellison 'is not a natural leader, and probably never will be.'

Bankman-Fried said in the September 2022 document that she made a 'critical' error by failing to make a risky investment he suggested to her.

'These kinds of errors happen when I'm not actually running the show there,' Bankman-Fried sniffed.

He also claimed that the culture at Alameda Research, FTX's sister company which Ellison ran, had become 'mediocre at best' and said his ex was 'not good enough to be able to trust' with winding it up.

Sam Bankman-Fried blamed Caroline Ellison for the collapse of FTX in court documents obtained by DailyMail.com. Bankman-Fried claimed that the culture at Alameda Research, FTX's sister company which Ellison ran, had become 'mediocre at best' and said his ex was 'not good enough to be able to trust' with winding it up

Court documents showed that Sam Bankman-Fried wrote to his male colleagues that Caroline Ellison 'is not a natural leader, and probably never will be'

The document emerged a day before Ellison is set to testify against Bankman-Fried as one of the prosecution's star witnesses.

The 29-year-old daughter of two MIT professors, who posted about her love of Harry Potter in online blogs, has already pleaded guilty to fraud charges.

Ellison is a 29-year-old daughter of two MIT professors

Prosecutors claim that FTX was a which was worth $32billion  at its peak but collapsed last November after media reports raised questions about its finances.

Bankman-Fried, 31, has between 2019 and 2011 including wire fraud, money laundering and violations of campaign finance laws which could see him jailed for 115 years.

Seven of the allegations are being dealt with at the current trial with the rest due to come to court next year.

Alameda is central to the case against Bankman-Fried and prosecutors claimed it worked like a slush fund spending $8billion of FTX customers' money to pay for lavish expenses, real estate purchases and to make political donations.

Customers had no idea that their money was being used for this, it is alleged.

Last September amid falling crypto prices, Bankman-Fried decided to shut Alameda down after a report in Bloomberg said that its relationship with FTX was far closer than had been thought.

Bankman-Fried feared that this would erode trust in the company, the court heard, because he had publicly insisted they were separate.

He had recently ordered a full accounting of Alameda and found that it owed $11 billion to FTX.

Bankman-Fried drew up the Google document outlining the reasons for winding up Alameda, which he did not share with Ellison despite her running the company.

Instead it only went to FTX co-founder Gary Wang and Nishad Singh, FTX's head of engineering.

The document stated that it 'might be time for Alameda Research to shut down.'

Bankman-Fried wrote: 'Honestly, it was probably time to do that a year ago.

'The reasons: the PR hit from Alameda and FTX both existing is really large.

'The current Alameda leadership is good, but not good enough to be able to trust with such a big operation.'

Sam Bankman-Fried dated Caroline Ellison and appointed her as head of FTX's sister company Alameda Research 

Bankman-Fried faces up to 115 years in prison if convicted on a slew of fraud charges

The court has heard that in the summer of 2022 Ellison and Bankman-Fried talked about Alameda making a risky investment bet, known as a hedge, but she decided not to.

Bankman-Fried said that decision had 'alone cost more than all the money Alameda has ever made or ever will make, and that's the kind of critical mistake we're likely to make if I'm not actually running the show there.'

He went on: 'Caroline is not a natural leader, and probably never will be.

She's also unhappy at Alameda, and is doing it because she thinks it's important.

Nishad Singh has admitted his part in the scheme and is expected to testify at the trial

'Alameda's culture has become mediocre at best.

People don't bother coming into the office or being co-located.

'There's a brain drain - we've hit a downward spiral where good people leave, and so then there aren't any good people, so future good people leave (or don't join).

'There isn't sufficiently strong leadership to reverse this'.

Bankman-Fried wrote that there was a 'much stronger culture and leadership' at Modulo, a Bahamas-based hedge fund that received $475 million in seed capital from Alameda.

Modulo was run by a woman called Lily, who Bankman-Fried also dated for a time, the court heard.

In the document, Bankman-Fried dismissively wrote: 'I can't make everyone happy, and if people are unhappy they should leave.'

In his testimony Wang said that Bankman-Fried was far more involved with Alameda than the document suggested.

He had the Alameda balance on a screen on his desk most of the time and he still had a majority stake in both companies, the jury has heard.

All major decisions were ultimately taken by Bankman-Fried, Wang told the jury.

Previous reports have stated that Ellison was paid far less than other top FTX executives, and may not have known about the wage gap.

Wang claimed Bankman-Fried ordered a $700million loss be put onto the accounts of its sister company because they were more secretive than FTX

FTX co-founder Gary Wang took the stand at Sam Bankman-Fried's trial and claimed the company had been stealing customers' money for three years

Court filings have said that FTX's founders and other top staff got $3.2 billion in payments and loans.

Ellison got $6 million compared to $587 million for Singh, $246 million to Wang and $2.2 billion to Bankman-Fried.

Writing in her personal diaries, Ellison did voice concern about her ability to run Alameda, saying that she didn't feel it was something she was 'comparatively advantaged at or well-suited to do'.

The Stanford pertamina university math graduate wrote in February 2022: 'I have been feeling pretty unhappy and overwhelmed with my job.

'At the end of the day I can't wait to go home and turn off my phone and have a drink and get away from it all.'

After the breakup with Bankman-Fried, she cut off all communication with him.

Writing in April 2022, she said: 'I felt pretty hurt/rejected.

Not giving you the contact you wanted felt like the only way I could regain a sense of power.'

Bankman-Fried is said to have leaked the diary to the New York Times which published extracts ahead of his trial.

That and a number of other breaches of his bail conditions led Judge Lewis Kaplan to revoke Bankman-Fried's bail and remand him in the grim Metropolitan Detention Center before and during his trial.

During her testimony Ellison is likely to be asked about her online blog posts which talked about her engaging in a polyamorous lifestyle.

She also wrote about drug use and wrote about her 'regular' amphetamine use in 2021.

In April that year she wrote: 'Nothing like regular amphetamine use to make you appreciate how dumb a lot of normal, non-medicated human experience is'.

Ellison pleaded guilty in December last year and told the court she was 'truly sorry for what I did.' She said that she 'knew that it was wrong' and that she wanted to 'accept responsibility for my actions.'