Where In the World is Sam Bankman-Fried?
There are rumors that Sam Bankman-Fried has been trying to flee his home in the Bahamas, and is under local authority supervision.
Crypto based financial crimes and non-extradition countries are a match made in heaven. You can ask Do Kwon, founder of Terra LUNA, or Kyle Davies and Su Zhu, founders of Three Arrows Capital–if you can find them. Now for the story we all knew was coming: Sam Bankman-Fried has reportedly fled the Bahamas. Or is fleeing? There have been conflicting reports.
On November 11th, FTX filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and Bankman-Fried (SBF) stepped down as the CEO. Shortly after, his Gulfstream G450 left Nassau, Bahamas and landed in the early hours of November 12th in Buenos Aires, Argentina. This was tracked by some Twitter sleuths using a flight tracking website. SBF directly denied having fled the Bahamas, which means absolutely nothing as he’s been tied to large scale fraud and theft through FTX, but today there was a new development.
SBF, FTX co-founder Gary Wang, and FTX director of engineering Nishad Singh are all under supervision in the Bahamas by local authorities. There are reports that the three of them were trying to flee Nassau and make their way to Dubai, which does not have an extradition treaty with the United States.
This all comes after hundreds of millions were moved out of FTX’s reserves in what appeared to be an inside job.
Beyond these three, FTX sister company’s Alameda Research CEO, Caroline Ellison, is also reportedly trying to flee to Dubai. Ellison’s last publicly known location is Hong Kong, which means she probably has a better chance on the lam than SBF does right now. The two have a complicated history, which is all coming to light now.
The truth is, we don’t really know what’s going on. There have been arrest rumors for days now, but it seems abundantly clear that there have been laws broken and the US doesn’t plan to gloss over this one.