A jury took less than five hours to convict former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried of fraud and money laundering.
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Last November, Jake Thacker discovered more than $200,000 of his crypto and cash had gone missing. He’d been counting on it to pay off debts, and to pay taxes on stock he’d sold.
One year later, Thacker’s money is still nowhere to be found.
Thacker was caught up in the collapse of cryptocurrency exchange FTX, unable to withdraw what he had stored on the site.
“I went in, looked at where some of my account balances were, it didn’t seem to be right,” Thacker told NPR at the time. “Everything was frozen, there were all kinds of error issues. I was definitely in freak-out mode.”
Before the company filed for bankruptcy, he sent e-mails, made phone calls, and consulted a lawyer. Concern gave way to panic, and then resignation.
“I mean, it irrevocably changed my life,” Thacker now says.
Earlier this month, a New York City jury convicted FTX’s founder, Sam Bankman-Fried, of fraud and money laundering.
The former crypto mogul, who spent billions of dollars of FTX customer money on high-end real estate and speculative investments, could spend the rest of his life in prison after he’s sentenced early next year.
But to Thacker, that’s cold comfort.
Like thousands of Bankman-Fried’s victims, he has spent the last year trying to recover what he had on FTX. It hasn’t been easy. Or fruitful.
Bankruptcy proceedings continue in Delaware, and Thacker has tried to follow them from Portland, Oregon, where he lives.
But it’s hard to get a handle on what the high-paid lawyers are…
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