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- [00:01]
Nicole Lapin
So I have written, count them, five books now. But each time I'm in the writing process, I stay at an Airbnb. I love to stay at an Airbnb. When I was actually first launching this show, I was at an Airbnb in Arizona. It was so peaceful. It was stunning I could be productive and comfortable. The Airbnb was also surrounded by a ton of javelinas.
- [00:22]
Jake Thacker
If you know Arizona, you know they're like wild pig creatures.
- [00:26]
Nicole Lapin
But honestly, I love them too. Being away for work, for fun, or both is a perfect opportunity to host your space on Airbnb. And if you think that hosting is overwhelming, I have a solve for you. With Airbnb's co host network, it's easier than ever before to host. It's also a great way to earn some extra cash, which I know we all love. Now you can hire a quality local co host to take care of your home and your guests. They can do everything from creating your listing to managing reservations to messaging guests and even providing on site support. So if you've got a secondary property or an extended trip coming up and you need a little help hosting while you're away, you can hire eight co hosts to do the work for you. Find a co host@airbnb.com host well, you've.
- [01:12]
Chime Representative
Been hearing a lot on the show that prices are going up pretty much across the board and that means for a lot of us, bigger credit card bills and the last thing I want for you is credit card debt. So I am thrilled to say there is a better way. You can build credit with money you set aside and avoid interest or expensive debt with Chimes Credit Builder Card. It's a secured credit card with no credit check or minimum deposit required. Start building credit with your everyday purchases and regular on time payments, all with no annual fees, interest or credit check. @chime.com MNN I know that there's so much in the economy that's beyond our control right now. And so it makes me feel so much better that I can have control over my own little micro economy and do things that will help me and my credit score. A better credit score can give you access to lower rates on loans like for a car or a home or even if your renting. Good credit makes easier to secure an apartment or a house. A good credit score really makes a big difference. Turn your everyday purchases and on time payments into steps toward your financial goals with Chime Secured Credit Builder Visa Credit Card. Get started today@chime.com mnn that's chime.com mnn Chime feels like progress. The Chime Credit Builder Visa credit card is issued by the Bancorp Bank NA or Stride bank na. Spot Me eligibility requirements and overdraft limits apply. Chime Checking account required to apply out of network ATM withdrawals and OTC advance fees may apply. Timing depends on sub of payment file. Late payment may negatively impact your credit score. Results may vary. Go to chime.com disclosures for details.
- [02:39]
Nicole Lapin
I'm Nicole Lapin, the only financial expert you don't need a dictionary to understand it's time for some Money Rehab. If you love Money Rehab and I hope you do and are a true crime fan or you just love a good story, then I have another podcast for you beyond Money Rehab and Help Wanted. I host a third podcast called Scams, Money and Murder and I'm going to share a special episode with you today on Scams, Money and Murder. Each week I take you behind the headlines, diving even deeper to the wildest money crimes in the news. From cunning Ponzi schemes to high stake political scandals, even a group of killer investment bankers. Basically, each week we alternate between telling stories about gripping high stakes crimes featuring the most cutthroat people in the financial world and riveting first person interviews with the experts and the subjects themselves. The people who really shine a light on these crimes in a way you have never heard before. So join me every Thursday as I get you up to speed on the sleaziest, the scummiest and the most corrupt financial criminals the world has to offer. Believe me, your bank account will thank you for it. Just search Scams, Money and Murder wherever you get your favorite podcasts. In the meantime, I am so excited to share an episode of Scams, Money and Murder with you today. Starting now.
- [04:01]
Jake Thacker
This his crime house.
- [04:03]
Sam Bankman-Fried
There was nothing in our mind where an Entire platform in 24 hours, in 48 hours could just vanish. It's the cycle that is very difficult to get out of. It can happen to normal people in the blink of an eye.
- [04:26]
Jake Thacker
As they say, money makes the world go round.
- [04:29]
Nicole Lapin
What many don't talk about is the time it made people's worlds come to a screeching halt. Whether it's greed, desperation or a thirst for power, money can make even the most unassuming people do unthinkable things. And sometimes those acts can be deadly. This is Scams, Money and A Crime House Original. I'm your host Nicole Lapin. Every Thursday we alternate between covering infamous money motivated crimes and gripping interviews with the experts or those who are directly involved themselves. Crime House exists because of you. Please rate, review and follow Scams, Money and Murder wherever you get your podcasts and for early ad, free access and bonus content, subscribe to Crime House plus on Apple Podcasts. By now, most people have heard of ftx, the crypto exchange that went from being everywhere to suddenly gone. Marketed as a safe and easy way into cryptocurrency, FTX raised hundreds of millions of dollars, ran ads with huge celebrities, and promised financial freedom to everyday investors. But in late 2022, the empire crumbled when it was revealed that FTX had secretly funneled billions of dollars in customer funds to its sister company, Alameda Research, money that was then used for risky bets, political donations, and personal spending. We covered the story of FTX and its CEO Sam Bankman Fried, also known as SBF, and his dramatic fall in a November 2024 episode. If you haven't listened to that yet, you can find the link to it in the show notes for this episode. But today we're diving into the personal side of the collapse. My guest today is Jake Thacker, one of the many victims of the FTX collapse. He lost more than $200,000 when the platform crashed, money he believed was safely on a legitimate exchange. Now, Jake wasn't someone who made a bad investment. He was misled by a company that promised transparency while secretly gambling with user funds behind closed doors. He's been incredibly open and honest about his story, and we're so grateful to have him here to share it with us firsthand.
- [06:56]
Jake Thacker
Well, Jake, thank you so much for joining us. There is so, so much to talk about. If somebody has no idea about crypto or FTX or Bankman Fried or any of that, how would you summarize this whole thing in a sentence or two?
- [07:11]
Sam Bankman-Fried
It's not a Ponzi scheme the way that Sam Bankman Fried probably would coin. It is a venture gone horribly wrong. But in the eyes of everyone that was involved, it seemed like a total swindle, an unknown investment scheme, and no one had any idea that this could even happen, that it was even fathomable. And the story is the precedent of this thing happening. But really, the end of the day was a venture that everyone thought was on the up and up and had the scale of rocket ship just to realize it was full of air. There's nothing substantial there at all.
- [07:58]
Jake Thacker
And I want to double click on all of those points, but let's start at the beginning. What was your entry point into crypto? Was it something that you, you got into casually? Were You a serious investor? What was the deal?
- [08:10]
Sam Bankman-Fried
Yeah, no, in fact, I. For the longest time, even when I think bitcoin was the first one that came out, I kind of looked at it very skeptically as well. It wasn't until the pandemic, really, 2021, 2022, when I got into it, and it was really more of proximity to people that were doing it and had kind of egged me on to just try it. You never know. Kind of the green eggs and ham scenario of you can't knock it until you try it. And once I did, it was the trading that we were doing or the community that I was a part of was. Was fun. You know, we were creating algorithmic types of bots, grid bots, and so on and so forth to trade in the sideways market. And it was. It started out as a hobby, started out as small amounts, $100 here, $200 there. But then over time, as more success came in and I felt more comfortable, it turned into a real thing and turned into real money and turned into something that I thought I could pivot a lot of my current portfolio into and was sorely staking at the end of the day.
- [09:21]
Jake Thacker
So during COVID did you sell off your more traditional investments or. Or did you write it out? Did you use cash that was sitting on the sidelines for dabbling in crypto? What does your overall portfolio look like?
- [09:35]
Sam Bankman-Fried
It was more traditional stocks, bonds, Yeah, a handful of tech stocks. I worked for a couple of startups and had gotten equity there and was really leveraging that because it was quite sizable. But in all honesty, almost everything that I had in traditional markets ended up going into crypto as far as money that I chose to invest.
- [09:57]
Jake Thacker
And when you say that you were using bots to capitalize on a sideways market, like, that's real nerd stuff. You weren't a newbie investor.
- [10:08]
Nicole Lapin
You weren't just dabbling in the market.
- [10:09]
Jake Thacker
For the first time. You were in tech. You had already invested in more traditional vanilla investments before you got into this.
- [10:17]
Sam Bankman-Fried
Yeah, that's. That's fair to say. And again, the only reason I got into crypto was because the people that, again, I was close to, my friends, other people from some of the communities that I kind of wrote in, were doing that, and that's what I was interested in. And so that's what triggered my initial stake in the market.
- [10:38]
Jake Thacker
When you first dabble in crypto, I mean, the sort of entryway ideally is bitcoin. FTX was more fringe at the time, although they did put A ton of marketing into it, and we can talk about that. But how did they first come across your radar? Like, what initially drew you into ftx?
- [10:58]
Sam Bankman-Fried
Initially, we all heard about FTX and we all kind of saw their trajectory just go through the roof quite quickly. But in all honesty, I didn't even give them a second thought until it was the beginning of 2024, when the market started to kind of turn and started to go down. And a lot of my other assets that I had outside of FTX were down. The whole market was down. And when that happens, you look at strategies to optimize margins and look at ways to reduce your cost and increase your gains or sustain your gains. And ftx, their pitch was, we can do all the things that these bigger platforms can do, but we do it in a better, more efficient way at a lower cost than the consumer. Transaction fees are lower. We have all these other tokens and assets that are poised to be even more lucrative than some of the traditional Bitcoins or Ethereums and so on and so forth. And so it really was that that triggered my engagement with the platform to begin with.
- [12:05]
Jake Thacker
Originally, crypto was supposed to be a hedge for traditional assets. Now we've seen with a little bit of time that crypto investments, especially the bigger ones, move in lockstep with the overall market. Not as a hedge to it, but at the time you thought it could be, that's how it had been sold to everybody, as, you know, a new type of currency that can hedge against traditional equity fluctuations and things like that. But ftx, if anyone's confused, was it.
- [12:38]
Nicole Lapin
A coin or not?
- [12:38]
Jake Thacker
It was a platform analogous to, like a coinbase, where you could buy and sell. Yeah, right. There was a specific coin, but we'll get into that in a second.
- [12:47]
Sam Bankman-Fried
Yeah, exactly. It was an exchange, just like Binance or Coinbase, and it allowed people to commoditize on the market. Right. I want to invest X amount on this coin. They take your money, they invest it, they supposedly hold it for you, give you access to your returns. It's kind of like a Robinhood.
- [13:11]
Jake Thacker
Yeah, or like Fidelity or Vanguard for traditional.
- [13:15]
Sam Bankman-Fried
Exactly. And so again, that's where the biggest hang up was in the crypto markets, was we still weren't free of the traditional or institutional ways in which money transferred and flowed. Right. And that's to your point of it wasn't hedging or it wasn't in lieu of the traditional markets, it was in parallel or in tandem, because again, at that time, crypto was not seen as a quote unquote currency. And so it had to follow some sort of recognized monetary value in the dollar. More often than not. Was the one that we used in the US an exchange or wallet, in some instances, a place to store money or coins or tokens that you had acquired and weren't ready to put on the market, or weren't ready to pull out of the exchange and put into the traditional market, on and so forth.
- [14:12]
Jake Thacker
And typically when you're looking at getting into any product, face cream, you know.
- [14:21]
Nicole Lapin
A lip balm, I don't know, and.
- [14:23]
Jake Thacker
They are advertising on the super bowl and they have all these celebrity sponsors.
- [14:27]
Nicole Lapin
You think it's really cool. But when it comes to finance, I.
- [14:30]
Jake Thacker
Personally like my finance. So, so boring. And in hindsight, it's easy to say that the type of marketing they did would raise eyebrows because we know what happens next. But did that for you at the time, or did that help you trust them more or think that they were, you know, flesh with cash and nothing could go wrong?
- [14:49]
Sam Bankman-Fried
You know, honestly, it put them on the radar for me, but it didn't really give me pause for a couple of reasons, not so much as all the flash and the glitz and so on and so forth. But for instance, I worked for a company called Under Armour. Tom Brady and Steph Curry were both athletes of Under Armour. I had the lovely pleasure of meeting both several times. And it sounds very cliche, but I trusted them. And therefore I knew that they had invested in this platform and that as they have financiers and managers to guide them with their money and how to invest it wisely and what seems legitimate and what doesn't, I kind of wrote on that. I said, well, if Steph's in there, if Tom's in there, he can't be that bad. And my initial approach to the platform was not to use it as a trading platform. It was just to hold funds. I needed a place to hold funds and be able to access them quickly without incurring all these large transaction fees. And it was supposed to be temporary. It wasn't something in my long term strategy. It was a short term solution given the current market fluctuation at the time. And I think myself and a lot of others sadly saw the perception and saw the optics as more legitimized because of the actors involved and probably should have been more diligent in our vetting. But at the time, everything worked. There wasn't really any red flags either. The platform for itself works exactly as it was pitched and there weren't any issues up until November.
- [16:38]
Jake Thacker
Yeah, for sure. It makes so much sense. You, you know, look at Tom Brady and Steph Curry and they have huge brands and probably teams to do due diligence and vet the things that they endorse or promote. It makes all the sense in the world. I mean, how could you have known otherwise? You do say, though, you have a theory as to why things then blew up so quickly. Can you walk us through what you think really happened?
- [17:05]
Sam Bankman-Fried
Well, again, this is, if you know anything about. And this is getting into more of the political side of what we're experiencing current day, present day. There's a group called the PayPal Mafia. They've been toying around with this thing called the Network State forever and wanting to break down kind of the barriers of traditional government and society and whatever it is that their philosophy is, that kind of thing. I saw SBF as, and this is more retrospect than it was at the current time of somebody that really wanted to participate in that, because the one aspect to their scheme, whatever it is, was they didn't have a way to siphon off money. You can have Internet, you can be anywhere in the world, the Internet. You can have enough money to build platforms out in the middle of the ocean if you want, but you still had to use traditional banks. Crypto changed all of that. And on March 6, 2025, Trump signed an executive order establishing the first crypto treasury, or reserve, whatever the title is. He also invested heavily in this company called Praxis, which is part of the whole PayPal mafia thing. And so all these indicators were that he wanted to be part of that group, was willing to give over billions of dollars in order to do that. And it fit kind of the motif of why he originally said he started FTX and his principles of kind of a decentralized collective right, and everyone gives to everyone and so on and so forth. And that's what my thought is, because, again, no one has ever questioned, why did he start this? It wasn't nefarious at the beginning.
- [19:00]
Jake Thacker
Yeah, he had a thing called effective altruism. Right. That sounds delightful.
- [19:04]
Sam Bankman-Fried
And again, in all intents and purposes, despite all the marketing and that kind of thing, it was doing that like the platform did better things than some of the other ones. It was holding up, to, quote unquote, its true mission or philosophy in some respect. But again, I think the Alameda and the ftx, whatever they're doing with Alameda, whatever that was for, again, I think ties back into some of his inkling to be part of that crew and whatever it is that they want to try and accomplish, I think drove a lot of that. And it ended up blinding him to his responsibility of I started this company, there was millions of people involved, there's billions of dollars involved. I can't just neglect that at this point. But by that point it was too far gone. The funds were not there.
- [19:59]
Jake Thacker
So there were a lot of green flags for you. There were these famous athletes who put their name behind it. There was the PayPal mafia, there was Forbes 30 under 30. They were doing all the big marketing things. They checked a lot of boxes. In hindsight though, were there any red flags or gut feelings that you had that you pushed aside at the time?
- [20:25]
Sam Bankman-Fried
I pushed aside the juvenile nature of the platform, although people didn't seem to have an issue with it and it seemed to be trying a larger following in community day after day, month after month. It still wasn't as robust as some of the larger players. But money, it does weird things to people and it makes you rationalize things that you wouldn't normally rationalize in situations where you didn't think you were going to lose it. And that's prospect theory, if you're familiar with that. If we value loss more than we value gain. And that's what drove a lot of, I think people to start to look at FTX more legitimately in again, 2024, when the market was, I mean, bitcoin was tanking. I think by June or July it was the lowest it had been in almost the inception of bitcoin. But that was probably the one that I look back on and say the lack of longevity and established order within the marketplace was something I probably should have been more concerned about.
- [21:34]
Jake Thacker
Totally. And hindsight is, as always, 2020. But there were a lot of young founders at the time that didn't go to jail, to be fair. How much ultimately did you end up investing in MTX and over what time frame?
- [21:49]
Sam Bankman-Fried
So it was relatively quick. It was up to about 250k at one point. I was able to get a little bit out over before the whole implosion happened. 206, 207K total. But at, at certain points it had fluctuated up a little bit above that because of transferring from Binance and Coinbase, which I also had wallets with due to the timing of kind of coins. Right. So this coin is up, this coin is down. I'm going to transfer some now. I won't lose as much in the transfer. I won't get these big transfer Fees, so on and so forth. So by the time November hit, I had pretty much stopped all movement because I had enough. And what I was using FTX for was really more of a wallet, a bank to store money or coins that I was going to then cash out on to pay back some of the debts that I had incurred while upping my investment in crypto. Right. So leveraging certain assets that I had, knowing that I have to pay them back and I didn't want to wait on that and I did very well and I was able to save face in light of the downturn in the marketplace. So yeah, it was about 250 was, I think probably the max that I ever had on there. But I wasn't trading on the platform. I didn't ever buy any of their tokens that they offered. I didn't use the exchange to invest in any other of the coins or tokens. It was simply just a storage place. Knowing that if I'm going to take out a little bit here or there over the course of the next few months, because my goal was to take it all out in December, pay off substantial debt that I had and then continue doing what I had been doing in the past and maybe look into using it as some sort of subsidiary platform, not my primary one. I really like Binance. I really was leveraging them pretty effectively. And I don't know if that answers your question, but it was a good chunk of change. But I had in total that year alone probably lost about 800, upwards of like 800k due to the market turn down and some other factors when Bitcoin also had some issues in June as well. So I see.
- [24:13]
Jake Thacker
So outside of what you had in ftx, the market was going down, there were some leverage issues, it sounds like. So you were just, just in the red in general. And so the max you had in FTX was 250. You were able to get like 45k or so out at the time. What was that like? Was there some delay or hurdle?
- [24:34]
Sam Bankman-Fried
Oh no, no, no. This was right before November. So I had transferred some out because the market started to kind of track back up a little bit. And so I was going to try and use some of that, that it pulled out from FTX to make up a little bit of losses that had incurred over the summertime. And so that came out around beginning October, end of September. So I'd have to go double check that. But it was before November because when November hit and everyone scrambled to try and figure out what was going on, I Myself, many others hit transfer, transfer funds out. Okay, great. And then it just, it was like that spinning wheel of death. It just sat there and nothing happened. And it in even some instances, but I would log in, it would say transfer complete.
- [25:25]
Jake Thacker
But then you didn't see it.
- [25:26]
Sam Bankman-Fried
No, it's not transfer complete, it's just transfer. Their side said the system said we sent the proper messages to have the transfer be completed, but there's no money, there was no mechanism to actually send anything. And then it was just gone. And then it was just a black hole. You couldn't even. We'd go to the website and it just had their spinning logo.
- [25:50]
Jake Thacker
So this is when things start getting fishy and start crumbling.
- [25:55]
Sam Bankman-Fried
Yeah, this was November 8th. November 9th, because it was abrupt. I mean there were some leading indicators, right. And that kind of thing, but in all honesty, myself and others, and again in retrospect, probably should have been paying more attention, but there was nothing in our mind where an Entire platform in 24 hours, in 48 hours could just vanish and be gone. No money, no assurance, no backups, no nothing. That had not happened yet. Similar to FTX in June, Coinbase had to freeze assets for, or freeze trades for a few days because of some liquidity issues. They needed to transfer out some of what they had invested in, get some liquidity, put it back into user accounts and so on and so forth. So they had X trades for a few days myself and I think others were thinking that's probably what's happening here, is that they have over leveraged themselves, they need to dial it back, they need to sell off some of whatever they were messing around with in order to have the liquidity pool be exactly right for the amount of volume that was being traded on the platform.
- [27:10]
Jake Thacker
So you thought that, that it would, you know, freeze for a few days and come back.
- [27:14]
Sam Bankman-Fried
Exactly. And it did freeze, but forever it never came back.
- [27:23]
Jake Thacker
And so it sounds like the group of friends you had were all bullish on FTX at the time when you first saw the spinny wheel of death. I'm assuming you started texting friends and what did they say? They had the same issue or how did this spread?
- [27:43]
Sam Bankman-Fried
I primarily used a tool called bitsgap and there's a community there that I had been involved with and they were kind of like ex day traders and, and more kind of hobbyists than anything else. No one was like serious, serious, this is our job, this is what we do on a day to day basis for our well being and our paychecks. But they were all very smart and had been in traditional markets for many, many, many years. And I probably was more the anomaly. There was probably four or five others out of a group of a few thousand that, that actually had jumped into FTX and just decided to toy around with it. So I immediately, obviously got on the forum, the message board with them and said, hey, are you guys having issues? Yes, we're having issues. And then that spiraled to texting other people, just that I knew that traded crypto. Are you using ftx? Are you able to get access? But in reality, I didn't have a strong network of people that were FTX experts or were predominantly using it as their primary exchange. And so I myself was left with a lot of question marks and trying to keep up with all the news that was going back and forth. It was this one day, it was that one day. Then there was the bankruptcy. The website went up, the crow bankruptcy website went up and feverishly checking that out and filing a claim, and it was total chaos. And then the interviews started to roll in and, you know, the story kind of evolved. Because what I knew, what I knew in that first NPR interview was it had been two weeks and so much happened in the timeframe of the initial platform, and then the next day bankruptcy filing to then a month later or even into January of 2024, where people really started to get the landscape of how serious this was, and that there was no money, that it wasn't hidden, it wasn't mismanaged to the point where they had siphoned it off into all these other things and we just had to go to these other things. It was up in smoke, it just evaporated. And that was not something anyone else thought of either that, okay, platform can collapse, okay, great, that can happen. But then $10 billion worth of assets can just disappear as well. Where did it go? Who did it go to? How did it happen? Are these people gonna cough it up and how do we find it? It was very challenging for me because again, the community that I normally messaged in, they didn't have a ton of insight. And so I tried my best to try and go find resources. There are some people also that have been interviewed over the course of all of this that I had reached out to and gotten their two cents on and that kind of thing. But there were a lot of people that were left on their own without questions, without any resources. And maybe the few people that they did know that had used the platform didn't have any other information either. They had the same questions with the same lack of answers. And so you could have had 10,000 people texting in one group and it would have all been the same. It would have been a lot of frustration, more than it would have been practice.
- [31:04]
Jake Thacker
Because not only were the interviews coming out, you mentioned npr, but the tweet, the story played out on Twitter, basically. I mean, I don't know if you were a big Twitter guy before this, but did you see all of it come out? Like, you mentioned that you were a fan of binance. That was SBF's competitor, CZ. I won't say his full name, I will for sure butcher it, but he tweeted. As part of Binance's exit from FTX equity last year, binance received roughly 2.1 billion USD equivalent in cash, B USD and FTT, which is FTX token. Due to recent revelations that have come to light, we have decided to liquidate any remaining FTT on our book.
- [31:50]
Sam Bankman-Fried
Books, end quote.
- [31:51]
Jake Thacker
Did you see this? I saw that come out real time.
- [31:54]
Sam Bankman-Fried
I didn't see it come out in real time. I saw a post about it. I think it was on Reddit, actually. Somebody had posted it there. And because I don't have Twitter, and so I wasn't trolling the Twitter feeds or anything like that, but I did see that that was my biggest red flag that things were wrong. Because again, Binance was someone that knew what they were doing, how to do it, regardless of any nefarious activities that they were involved in or not. They had been around, they had played the game, they knew how to manage upturns, downturns in the market, so on and so forth. And so I respected that. It was a huge sign that if they are not confident in an investment of that size and magnitude, there's something very wrong. Because again, they had been talking for some time and SBF had hinted at partnership or some sort of investment from Binance, which would have raised their profile significantly. There was the tweet also that SBF put out about, everything's fine, liquidity is fine. I didn't see that until maybe a few days after it came out because I didn't have Twitter. Then it became, when the implosion happened, people obviously came back to that saying, like, why did he say this? And so on and so forth. So I didn't see that in real time. Even if I had the question of why did Binance all of a sudden just shake it and say, hey, without rhyme or reason, we are simply just liquidating everything. Not like, hey, we're going to Pause. We're maybe going to do this in phases. It was. We're out, we're not saying anything. Good luck. That. That was a big message in the marketplace. Yeah.
- [33:45]
Jake Thacker
I mean, for you, did you think this could spread to more of the financial system? I mean, it sounds like you lived through 2008. Did you have a moment where you thought the whole system could implode?
- [34:00]
Sam Bankman-Fried
Of course, yeah. My first thought was, how does this affect the market? How does this affect the legitimacy of all the other platforms? And are they doing the exact same thing? And do they equally have cash on hand to make good on all of their users or creditors? I immediately thought that, and I immediately stopped trading, pulled out any of the remaining assets that I had or as much as I could at the time, because, again, there were some restrictions because the run on the bank was definitely a real concern, I think, amongst the other platforms. And it took a few months, but finally I had divested everything I had in crypto, which at that point was not a lot, and had got it back into a traditional bank account. And after that, I haven't jumped back in. And clearly things are operating fine for the most part. The market has had that recovery, has been. Had a fabulous year this year, for the most part. And maybe I missed out, but at the time was not in a position to even consider that it was shipped on fire, everyone for themselves kind of a thing.
- [35:10]
Jake Thacker
When do you think it really sunk in that the money was gone? Because I'm sure at that point there was a ton of adrenaline. Get the money out, get it into a traditional bank, move as quickly as possible, try to salvage anything you possibly can. So when was it that it finally hit you?
- [35:29]
Sam Bankman-Fried
It was probably a couple of weeks. I can't remember the exact date. It was the first week in December. I had given the first NPR interview, and it made me think, you know, I really should go check. I should. I should go back through and I should be seeing if I can get on the platform, seeing what's really there versus not there, because they were transfers on the end of Bitcoin and Finance that said pending that there had been something that had triggered a notification that said there's a transfer pending. And I figured because of that, eventually the system would get sorted out. Because at this point, there's still a huge doubt in everyone's mind that the money is completely gone, but it's just drained and that it's a system issue and that they need to reconcile this versus this. And there's just a lot of moving pieces and it's taking time. Bankruptcy had been filed, so obviously the legal entities need to get involved and verify things. So it was definitely that first week in December when I sent a message to, I think it was Coinbase support and said, are these going to go through? And they said, no, as far as we know that these are just system triggers when an event happens. There hasn't been any other data sent through or any other meta tags suggest that these are legit and if you want we can cancel them out, but the likelihood of them coming through is nil at this point, so on and so forth. So I was like, okay, it's really just gone. And that realization was very stark because at that point it wasn't, I've lost some money, I'm going to have some. It was zero. I don't know how many people have had that happen before, but I had never had that happen in any other investments that I had. Whether it was a bet, whether it was something from my youth or anything like that, never from a fairly decent amount to zero in less than three weeks and with almost no recourse of recovery, it was mind boggling, but it was also terrifying at the same time.
- [37:49]
Jake Thacker
I can only imagine. So just to sort of zoom out at this point, you had a bunch of other losses and other investments. FTX had gone under, you basically had nothing. There was no hidden bank account or brokerage or something for you to live on. What was, I mean, you're going into the holidays too at this point, to December, what was that like for you? Guess. Not just financially, emotionally and, and physically.
- [38:22]
Sam Bankman-Fried
Yeah. I immediately got in touch with a debt restructuring company because I had essentially told my debtors or creditors that I was planning to pay back what I had leveraged at the end of the fiscal year. That was kind of an expectation and they had brokered a deal with me understanding that it was a short term loan essentially that was going to be paid back in quick succession. And so they were, they were fine with allowing me to go on.
- [38:51]
Jake Thacker
Not related to ftx. You just had a loan, right?
- [38:54]
Sam Bankman-Fried
Well, I, yeah, used that money to invest more heavily in crypto in general, not necessarily ftx. So I immediately knew I was going to have to work with them and I was going to need professional help that I wouldn't be able to do that on my own. So I met with the debt collection company. We worked out a plan and their job is to work with people that you have debt with your creditors and so on and so forth to come up with reasonable Repayment, structuring plans and so on and so forth. And I had my job. I worked at a company called NOOM at the time and was doing fairly well from a career standpoint. And it was going to be extremely tight, but it was going to be manageable. I would be able to do it. Baron, nothing else happened. Well, it wasn't until February when the tech layoffs happened and I got laid off from my job that things really got serious. And at that point debt collection wasn't an option. And I thought, okay, what are the real options here? Bankruptcy was one of the first things that somebody recommended. It's not something that I had ever considered myself having to do, needing to do, or having to consider at all in the course of my life. I had like to think that I was pretty financially prudent and that something like that was not in my future, but it was. And I had opted to do chapter seven personal bankruptcy. But that is a qualification process that takes quite some time because they look back at your history and they say, okay, if you were here at this point and you're now here, why can't you do this? Or why couldn't you do this? Or what happened? And so my bankruptcy lawyer essentially said, you can't file right away. We can get everything ready, but we have to wait at least eight to 12 months because you won't qualify. There's a very specific bar that has to be met. And unfortunately, if they wouldn't look back right now, you have had some tough times, but you still wouldn't qualify. And so that started this essentially two year journey of not getting any income, not having full time work and having to scrape by in order to meet the qualifications to file. And then some events that happened after filing that truck things out in February, March, got out of it. I mean, and when I say got out of it, got out of the bankruptcy, got out of the foreclosure, any of the financial obligations and responsibilities I had prior to ftx. It's been that long. I told the crew on Thursday that my mother was nice enough to buy me some groceries at a fancy store that we have here called Due Seasons. I don't ever shop there anymore because piece of food costs $50. It's a very privileged thing to be able to go there. And I just remember thinking, eating almond and realizing this is the first time my refrigerator has been full of locally sourced whole foods like vegetables and fruits and that kind of thing in almost two and a half years. That was a sad and also humbling realization. It just kind of put together at nighttime, but it sums it up, up quite aptly in the sense of the catalyst of ftx, the job markets being laid off, going through all the proceedings to situate myself in a place where I could even begin to start to rebuild. And that's essentially where I am right now. And it's taken that this long.
- [42:54]
Jake Thacker
Wow. So it's, it's safe to say that you went through a hard mental health time. Were you depressed?
- [43:01]
Sam Bankman-Fried
I don't think I was. In fact, I got the comment a lot that how are you handling this so well? And I don't have a straight answer for that. I didn't really think about it that much or try and pin it down. I just kind of said, let's just keep going, let's keep going. I just slided into the tunnel like, don't give up. And that's really what kind of drove me. In fact, this place that I'm in right now is not my condo that I had owned. I recently moved in the last two months. I'm essentially living here for free. And person that owns this is actually in Europe for the next few months and was nice enough to let me squat here while he's off doing fun things, I guess, but it was extremely challenging. But the challenge also brought a lot of opportunity for me to discover and question. I'm kind of an analytical person and I can now understand and appreciate the kind of institutional process in which once people find themselves in a position of bankruptcy or insolvency, that the mechanisms and agencies in place to help lift people up or to support support also are as detrimental as anything else. And it's this cycle that is very difficult to get out of if you don't have the resolve or even the sliver of resources to be able to do it. And I felt compelled to try and understand that and fight that in some instance, many times, failure. And so it wasn't just, you know, the FTX and losing my job, it was fighting some of the bankruptcy trustees, it was fighting some of the court proceedings when it came to the foreclosure and how that all played out, and spending money that I didn't have, other people's money to go to court and try and fight some of these things and just get laughed out of the courtroom, essentially. So it was a humbling experience, say at least, not that I didn't invite some of it myself, but I don't wish it upon anyone. And regardless of the trigger, with FTX or not, there is a systemic issue in the country that allows you to be able to file for bankruptcy, but then does not allow you to necessarily come out of that or essentially benefit from the opportunity to do that in a way that moves things forward, in my opinion, in all honesty, you know, reason why I said I didn't think bankruptcy was for me is because I thought these people were lazy. I thought they were irresponsible. I thought they. There was a whole stereotype of things that I had thought people with bankruptcy in that realm of losing things or having to be in that situation, the kind of character they were, just to find myself in there and to be extremely humbled and humanized to realize that it can happen to anyone. I shouldn't say it probably can't happen to the PayPal mafia crew, but it can happen to normal people in the blink of an eye. And I wish that there were a better solution. And it's frustrating. That was probably the thing that drove me the most is why is it like this? Why are there no resources? Why can't I get questions answered? I'm being told what to do, but I'm not being told why. I don't have an advocate outside of paying someone to help me get through the process to try and solution something different or understand like, hey, is my situation worthy of this versus that? That's probably what drove me at the end of the day.
- [46:43]
Jake Thacker
So in other words, you're saying that the system around bankruptcy that's in theory put in place to help people out of a bad situation makes it harder.
- [46:53]
Nicole Lapin
To get credit or to get a.
- [46:55]
Jake Thacker
New place, which is why it sounds like you're staying with a friend or to rebuild financially, which is where you were stuck. And while you were going through this, FTX was also going through bankruptcy. Were you able to get any of the funds through their bankruptcy process? Were you part of any of the class action lawsuits?
- [47:17]
Sam Bankman-Fried
I didn't partake in any of the class action lawsuits simply because I had enough going on in my personal life that it wasn't something I had the headspace for. In fact, I needed to be away from that and not be involved. I did file a claim, however, that was very early days, before things changed, before the new name came along. I'm still a little unclear about some of the FTX subsidiaries and now new holdings and that kind of thing. And they're obviously still experiencing major issues because payments have not been going out as they promised. At least I haven't seen them anyway. I did file a claim. I did not want to not try to Recoup some of the funds that.
- [48:05]
Jake Thacker
I had lost for their bankruptcy.
- [48:07]
Sam Bankman-Fried
For their bankruptcy. Right. So you could get your authentication and verification done, which has been an issue. I have not done that yet again, extended the deadline to June 1st or I'm probably going to do that here in the next month or two just to play the game. But additionally, I did mine and then I, I kind of washed my hands of it and I didn't want to partake in it. I watched a little bit of the trial and obviously heard the verdict and was like, that's great, fantastic. Like justice is served, I guess. But it didn't have an effect on me. It didn't have effect on what I was dealing with and what I was going to have to deal with and the challenges that I was facing, you know, in the months that I knew were coming up. And so in all honesty, I don't know if people are going to see all their money again. They say they are, but if you go and look on the website, the amount of claims that they have, the amount of motions that have been filed just within the past couple months is insanity. It's going to take years. I mean, they have the money, great. That's one thing. Getting it to the entities that are needing it, sorting out all of those claims because there's hundreds of thousands of them, I think it's just going to take forever.
- [49:26]
Jake Thacker
You've spent a lot of time thinking about all of this, I'm sure, living through it. What are your thoughts now on Sam Bankman Fried?
- [49:35]
Sam Bankman-Fried
My thoughts now are almost worse than they were before in the sense of everyone painted him as this mastermind, villain. I don't see that now. I see it as a. A spoiled kid who had parents that were able to guide him. He went to, you know, prestigious institutions that enabled him access to the likes of Peter Thiel and other investors that would fund him for all intensive purposes. He had no interest in crypto before starting ftx. If you go back and look at his tenure at mit, like he didn't ever prophesize like, I'm going to build the next crypto exchange now. He prophesied some of his other philosophical ambitions and that kind of thing, but it wasn't necessarily crypto platform, right. It was some iteration of freeness and community. But it was necessary. Necessary that. So I see him as a privileged white male like myself, able to build and get incredible access to initial funds to scale and perpetrate something that he personally wanted to do, whatever that is. And I kind of alluded to what my theory is, that's the big unknown. But he didn't start this for the betterment of mankind or people kind. He was selfish. He had an agenda. What that agenda is hard to say. I mean, obviously there was some legitimacy at the beginning. There was an intention to do this. It wasn't a Ponzi scheme, it wasn't a scam, it wasn't. Now I'm going to pull the rug out from you at the very last moment. There was the intent to provide for the most part, but I think that he deserves every minute in jail, sitting in his cell with P. Diddy and the likes. They, they're good riddance. They deserve each other.
- [51:36]
Jake Thacker
If he was sitting here now and you had a chance to speak to him, what would you say?
- [51:40]
Sam Bankman-Fried
I probably wouldn't say much. I, I have not a lot of words for someone like that. But I would say that regardless of whatever restitution, he has to pay back whatever time he has to do to, you know, make good on his crime and that kind of thing. I hope he's haunted by the fact of the detriment to people. Right? The Hundreds of thousands, 400 plus thousand users on the platform that were affected by this, not the big investors. I'm talking about people that had their life savings of 50000k or less or complete, in utter enveloped into the platform, just destroyed, right? Lives completely destroyed. I mean my situation is not perfect, but some people literally, they either retired or were planning to retire. Now they can't retire and has messed up their life, has messed up their family's lives and messed up their children's lives like generational impact. I hope that that haunts him because it's the only restitution really that the victims will get if they get any money back anytime soon or if they get the full value. It's a little too late, right? The damage has been done.
- [53:08]
Jake Thacker
He was of course sentenced to 25 years in prison. Do you think that was justice? And if not, what does justice look like to you?
- [53:17]
Sam Bankman-Fried
Well, I, I think it's justice in this, in the fact that regardless of the amount of time, which clearly was done as a precedence for nefarious characters that may have plans of doing something like this in the future or are currently in the marketplace and doing things that could be considered fraudulent or affecting the market and consumers of crypto and the currencies and the tokens and the innocent that just want to partake in, in a proactive and positive way, I don't think justice was served in the sense that time in prison with these types of crimes doesn't create a state of what I would call civic restitution for the people that were impacted. Sure, that they could file bankruptcy and they could find the money and, and maybe get it back to people. But as I said, there is a precipice of time that is really essential for that to really matter for people's lives to be not irreverently changed. There's been a lot of great coverage about the case and about him and about the situation, but not about the systems and the institutions that manage this and manage the blowback of it and are supposed to be in charge of rectifying and resolving these types of things. I think that's where the justice fails. And that's not necessarily something you can pin on him. But I would rather see him spend less time in prison and have to help with this in some shape or form. Right. Be on the hook for making this work and happen. And even if it's going around door to door to the victims and apologizing or something along those lines than, you know, hiding away in a cell and that kind of thing. And who knows, maybe he will get pardoned by Trump and that'll be just icing on the cake if that happens. But I think the system did what the system was designed to do. I don't think the system is designed in a way that really is an advocate for the victims and these types of scenarios.
- [55:30]
Nicole Lapin
So because the system hasn't changed much.
- [55:32]
Jake Thacker
Do you think this can happen again?
- [55:34]
Sam Bankman-Fried
In some respects, yeah. I don't know of this miraculous collection of scenarios that just collate into one massive kind of fallout. I don't know if that could happen again because there's probably triggers and flags in place on all primary exchanges now that would prevent that from happening. Or they're very cautious about that happening.
- [55:57]
Jake Thacker
Right.
- [55:58]
Sam Bankman-Fried
Their attention is so focused on this now that they're not focused on the next thing that could happen. And of course it. It's just a matter of time.
- [56:05]
Jake Thacker
Yeah, it's like when you go to the airport and you now take off your shoes. I don't think we're going to have any shoe bombs anytime soon, but that doesn't prohibit something else potentially from happening. Same in the financial world. So not another ftx, but something else could potentially happen with people listening and getting into different kinds of investments. Especially now when the market is low, some say that it's a good time to get in instead of get out. Do you have any advice for somebody who's thinking about investing in crypto today?
- [56:42]
Sam Bankman-Fried
I'm not an investor and I'm not a financial advisor, but I have heard plenty of people say it's. And give me advice of an investment is ever secure, it is never realized until it's realized. And all you can do is ensure that you're comfortable with what you are investing in and that you have done enough of the research and vetting that you can minimize as much risk as possible. That is known because what's undone is undone. And the end of the day, it's a personal choice. And I would never tell somebody not to do it because of my experience, because it was a time and place and it could be years before something like that happens again, if it could, but at the same time it could be beneficial, they could profit from it. It's really their own personal approach to that risk assessment. And I would say for me, have the caution as much. That threshold is much higher than it would be two, three years ago. But that doesn't preclude it from being like any other investment. There aren't the benefits to be realized. There are definitely the pitfalls. But that's the same with property these days. That's the same with the traditional stock market. So nothing is safe. It's just how comfortable you are and how willing you are to potentially go down that journey and see what happens.
- [58:13]
Jake Thacker
To be fair, some investments are safe and principle protected and bonds and things like that. So if you want lower risk, there are some options. But you're saying, you know, be vigilant, don't mourn paper losses, which is easy to do. The, the two days that are most important are the days you buy and the days you sell. And everything else is kind of noise.
- [58:31]
Sam Bankman-Fried
Everything else is death and taxes, right?
- [58:33]
Jake Thacker
Death and taxes. Would you get into this space? Would you invest again or have you completely stepped away?
- [58:42]
Sam Bankman-Fried
I actually was just looking at it the other day. Obviously I haven't done an interview in a while and was poking around and pulled up the old bitsgap community and said hey to everyone and that kind of thing. And they were like, jake, where have you been? It's like doing some stuff, you know. So I myself, you know, can't be too much of an alarmist because at some point or another I probably will. I certainly will probably consider myself to be a. From an investor standpoint, few here, just a few there. Just again, I enjoyed the challenge of it and the strategy and analysis. That's still something I think is tangible and can happen without you know, having the, the world fallout from under you and that kind of thing. So, yeah, at some point I could see myself right this second, no, I have other things to focus on. But, you know, if I get back to a place where I have some stability and some walking around money, then yeah, absolutely.
- [59:44]
Jake Thacker
And finally, is there anything else you'd want other victims to know? Especially someone who might feel alone or frustrated by the system and the bureaucracy and all the hoops you have to go through to even try to get anything back?
- [59:59]
Sam Bankman-Fried
I would say try, definitely try. I'm a bad example in the sense that I should have done more for my own cause, for my own case, but because I was dealing with other things, I was just kind of too upset and too disgruntled to really be an advocate for myself. But if you find yourself in a situation like this, there are more people now, I would say, readily available and willing to jump in and assist, whether it be lawyers, whether it be advocacy groups, whether it be communities, whatever the case may be, than there have been in the past. And so there are more resources available now for victims of such types of crimes, especially I would say the crypto markets and that if you feel like that has happened or you've definitely have been impacted by it, then don't just write off your losses like fight for it. Because there is the potential to get your some portion of your pie back.
- [61:02]
Jake Thacker
For sure if those organizations haven't been cut by Doge.
- [61:06]
Sam Bankman-Fried
Right. That's fair point. Touche to that.
- [61:09]
Jake Thacker
Oh, Jake.
- [61:10]
Nicole Lapin
Well, thank you so much for sharing your story with us. It takes a lot to speak about.
- [61:14]
Jake Thacker
This openly and honestly.
- [61:15]
Nicole Lapin
It is something so personal and painful and I know your honesty will definitely.
- [61:19]
Jake Thacker
Resonate with a lot of people.
- [61:20]
Nicole Lapin
Tim, thank you.
- [61:21]
Sam Bankman-Fried
Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for having me. Appreciate what you guys are doing.
- [61:30]
Nicole Lapin
Thank you so much for listening. I'm your host, Nicole Lapin. Scams Money and Murder is a Crime House original. Join me every Thursday for a brand new episode here at Crime House. We want to thank each and every one of you for your support.
- [61:42]
Jake Thacker
If you like what you heard here.
- [61:43]
Nicole Lapin
Today, reach out on social media Rimehouse. Don't forget to rate, review and follow Scams, Money and Murder wherever you get your podcast. Your feedback truly makes a difference. And for ad free listening plus early access and bonus content. Subscribe to Crime House plus on Apple Podcasts. Scams, Money and Murder is hosted by me, Nicole Lapin and is a Crime House original. Powered by Pave Studios, this episode was brought to life by the Scams, Money and Murder Team Max Cutler, Ron Shapiro, Alex Benidon, Stacey Warrenker, Sarah Camp, Paul Libeskin and Victoria Asher. Thank you so much for listening.