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FTX Hack Mystery Possibly Solved: U.S. Charges Trio With Theft, Including Infamous Attack on Crypto Exchange
The federal indictment doesn't identify Sam Bankman-Fried's FTX as the pilfered company, but Bloomberg reported that's who it was.
Updated Mar 8, 2024, 8:54 p.m. Published Feb 1, 2024, 10:59 p.m.
The U.S. federal government on Wednesday charged three people with a yearslong phone hacking conspiracy that culminated in the infamous theft of $400 million from FTX as Sam Bankman-Fried's crypto exchange was collapsing.
In an 18-page indictment filed in D.C. court, prosecutors accused Robert Powell, Carter Rohn and Emily Hernandez with conspiracy to commit wire fraud and identity theft in their operation of a SIM swapping ring that targeted fifty victims between March 2021 and April 2023.
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Their most notable heist came on Nov 11, 2022, when the trio siphoned $400 million from an unidentified company. Bloomberg, citing sources familiar with the matter, said that company was FTX.
Read more: 'FTX Has Been Hacked': Crypto Disaster Worsens as Exchange Sees Mysterious Outflows Exceeding $600M
They gained access to an employee of the crypto exchange through AT&T and transferred out hundreds of millions of dollars worth of crypto.
The charges offer a solution to one of the most vexing questions left in the FTX saga: what happened to hundreds of millions of dollars in crypto that disappeared in the exchange's darkest hour, right after it filed for bankruptcy protection.
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What to know:
- As of October 2025, GoPlus has generated $4.7M in total revenue across its product lines. The GoPlus App is the primary revenue driver, contributing $2.5M (approx. 53%), followed by the SafeToken Protocol at $1.7M.
- GoPlus Intelligence's Token Security API averaged 717 million monthly calls year-to-date in 2025 , with a peak of nearly 1 billion calls in February 2025. Total blockchain-level requests, including transaction simulations, averaged an additional 350 million per month.
- Since its January 2025 launch , the $GPS token has registered over $5B in total spot volume and $10B in derivatives volume in 2025. Monthly spot volume peaked in March 2025 at over $1.1B , while derivatives volume peaked the same month at over $4B.
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CFTC Launches Digital Assets Pilot Allowing Bitcoin, Ether and USDC as Collateral
Acting Chair Caroline Pham has unveiled a first-of-its-kind U.S. program to permit tokenized collateral in derivatives markets, citing "clear guardrails" for firms.
What to know:
- The CFTC has launched a pilot program allowing BTC, ETH and USDC to be used as collateral in U.S. derivatives markets.
- The program is aimed at approved futures commission merchants and includes strict custody, reporting and oversight requirements.
- The agency also issued updated guidance for tokenized assets and withdrew outdated restrictions following the GENIUS Act.
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