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Sam Bankman-Fried Agrees to Help FTX Investors Go After Celeb Promoters
Bankman-Fried’s one-time friends and co-defendants Caroline Ellison, Gary Wang, and Nishad Singh have already settled with the investors.
Updated Apr 22, 2024, 4:15 p.m. Published Apr 22, 2024, 4:12 p.m.
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Sam Bankman-Fried has inked a settlement agreement with a group of FTX customers who have agreed to drop their class action lawsuit against him in exchange for his help going after celebrity promoters of the collapsed exchange.
The agreement, filed in a Miami court on Friday, has not yet been approved by a judge. If approved, the settlement would release Bankman-Fried from both current and future civil liability tied to the collapse of FTX.
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Bankman-Fried's end of the bargain will see him providing the plaintiffs’ attorneys with information – including both testimony and documents in his possession – to “aid in victim recovery” and assist their litigation efforts against a host of celebrity promoters and venture capital firms who endorsed FTX. He has also agreed to provide the attorneys with financial information and documents, including a total of his remaining personal assets and his firm’s 2021 investment in AI startup Anthropic.
The pending settlement agreement comes shortly after Bankman-Fried was convicted of fraud and sentenced to 25 years in prison for his role in FTX’s implosion. Bankman-Fried has appealed his sentence and conviction.
Bankman-Fried’s one-time friends, colleagues and co-defendants Caroline Ellison, Nishad Singh and Gary Wang, as well as FTX lawyer Dan Friedberg, have made similar settlement agreements with the plaintiffs’ attorneys.
Several of the smaller celebrity promoters – including finance Youtubers Andrei Jikh, Graham Stephan, Jaspreet Singh, Tom Nash, Brian Jung and Jeremy Lefebvre – have also settled, contributing to a common fund of $1.4 million to fund the lawsuit, according to court documents.
Jacksonville Jaguars quarterback Trevor Lawrence, who was paid $500,000 in 2022 to endorse FTX subsidiary Blockfolio, also settled with the plaintiffs last year.
But most of the big name promoters of FTX – like athletes Tom Brady, Steph Curry, Shaquille O’Neill, Naomi Osaka and Shohei Otani and supermodel Gisele Bundchen – are fighting the lawsuit, as are over a dozen domestic and international venture capital firms.
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What to know:
- U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission Chairman Mike Selig directed his agency to file an amicus brief declaring his federal agency has authority over the U.S. prediction markets.
- Though the CFTC once fought a legal resistance against such firms as Polymarket and Kalshi, the agency has embraced them during the administration of President Donald Trump, whose son has worked as a paid adviser for the leading companies.
- As Selig defends his agency's jurisdiction in court, he's also pursuing new prediction markets rules for the U.S.
