FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried arrested in the Bahamas

Sam Bankman-Fried.
(Image credit: Matias J. Ocner/Miami Herald/Tribune News Service via Getty Images)

Sam Bankman-Fried, founder of the failed cryptocurrency exchange FTX, was arrested Monday in the Bahamas at the request of the U.S. government.

In a statement, the government of the Bahamas said the arrest came after officials received "formal notification from the United States that it has filed criminal charges against SBF and is likely to request his extradition."

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

On Nov. 11, FTX filed for bankruptcy after a run on deposits "exposed an $8 billion hole in the company's accounts," The New York Times writes. Bankman-Fried was soon being investigated by the Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission, with federal prosecutors in Manhattan looking into whether any laws were broken when FTX transferred billions of dollars to Alameda Research, a crypto hedge fund started and owned by Bankman-Fried.

Bankman-Fried made several public appearances after the bankruptcy filing, and at the recent DealBook Summit, he pinned FTX's collapse on "huge management failures." He had been scheduled to testify before a congressional committee on Tuesday.

Catherine Garcia, The Week US

Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.