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Dietrich Knout
(Reuters) – Federal prosecutors seized nearly $700 million in assets from FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried in January. The seizures were mostly in the form of Robinhood shares, according to court filings Friday.
Bankman-Fried, who is accused of stealing billions of dollars from FTX customers to pay debts owed by a crypto-focused hedge fund, has pleaded not guilty to fraud charges. He is scheduled to go to trial in a month.
The Justice Department revealed the seizure of Robinhood shares earlier this month, but provided a more complete list of seized assets on Friday.
Ownership of seized Robinhood shares worth about $525 million has been the subject of a dispute between Bankman-Fried, FTX and bankrupt crypto lender BlockFi.
The latest asset seizure reported by the DOJ took place on Thursday, when prosecutors seized $94.5 million in cash from Silvergate Bank accounts associated with FTX Digital Markets, a subsidiary of FTX in the Bahamas. DOJ seized more than $7 million from his Silvergate accounts linked to Bankman-Fried and other FTX.
DOJ previously seized approximately $50 million from the FTX Digital Markets account of Moonstone Bank, a small Washington state bank.
The DOJ also said assets in three Binance accounts related to Bankman-Fried are subject to criminal forfeiture, but did not provide an estimate of the value of those accounts.
(Reporting by Dietrich Knauth, Editing by Noeleen Walder and Daniel Wallis)
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