The US government wants to take control of almost $700 million of assets tied to Sam Bankman-Fried and FTX which it has seized.
The founder and former CEO of the collapsed cryptocurrency exchange is awaiting trial in October on eight charges of fraud and conspiracy, all of which he has denied.
He is accused of using billions of dollars of funds from FTX to cover losses at sister trading firm Alameda. Around $8bn of funds are estimated to be missing from FTX, which was valued at $32bn a year ago.
The assets seized include more that 55 million shares in trading platform Robinhood, worth about $525m, which were bought with money from Alameda and have been the subject of a tug-of-war between Bankman-Fried, FTX Group and bankrupt crypto lender BlockFi.
Officials have also moved to take control of $171m in cash from a series of bank accounts, the most recent of which was $94.5m seized by the Department of Justice from an account at Silvergate Bank on Thursday. The account was associated with FTX Digital Markets, FTX’s subsidiary in the Bahamas, where FTX and Bankman-Fried were based.
Several Binance accounts have also been seized.
FTX says that around $415m of crypto has been stolen by hackers – $323m from its international exchange and $90m from its US platform – since the firm filed for bankruptcy in November.