Following the filing for bankruptcy of FTX, it has been claimed that authorities in the United States are investigating the disappearance of virtual currency valued at approximately $372 million.
The United States Department of Justice is investigating the theft of millions of dollars worth of crypto currencies from the defunct crypto currency exchange FTX through illegal transactions conducted right after the major crypto exchange filed for bankruptcy.
US DOJ is Investigating the Matter
The narrative surrounding the exchange and its outspoken creator, Sam Bankman-Fried, recently took an unexpected turn when it was revealed that on November 11, just after the company had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, FTX was the target of an unknown attack.
After that, the monies were distributed over several different exchanges & transformed into a variety of crypto tokens.
Now, government lawyers are monitoring the assets, and they have successfully frozen some of them, according to a report published (1) on Tuesday by Bloomberg. On the other hand, the amount of money put on hold is referred to as a "fraction" of the total amount that was hacked.
Some Discrepency in the Amount Hacked
However, some blockchain researchers estimate that the hack resulted in the theft of over $650 million, making it one of the biggest crypto attacks of 2022. The digital asset exchange was located in the Bahamas. However, the petition for bankruptcy filed by FTX states (2) that "at least $372 million" was taken, suggesting some error in the accounting of the missing funds.
James Bromley, the lawyer for FTX's new administration, stated that a "substantial amount" of FTX's assets were either missing or had been stolen during the first court hearing that was held after the collapse of the exchange.
SBF Arrested But Soon Bailed Out
At the beginning of this month, the federal government struck FTX co-founder and former CEO Bankman-Fried with criminal charges. The investigation being conducted by the Department of Justice is unrelated to those accusations, and Bankman-Fried had previously alluded, before his arrest, to the possibility that the improper transactions were the result of an inside job carried out by an angry employee.
The previous month, it became apparent that FTX did not have adequate finances to back its clients' assets. As a result, the company swiftly went bankrupt.
According to recently appointed FTX CEO John J. Ray III, this was the case because Alameda Research, a sister firm that Bankman-Fried also created, had the power to exploit FTX client assets for its reasons and without monitoring.
After being deported to the United States from the Bahamas, Bankman-Fried was released on a pre-trial bond of $250 million and allowed to return home that he shared with his parents last week.
Meanwhile, the prices if all the major crypto currencies remain stagnated. Bitcoin continues trading in the range of $17,000 and $16,500. It was last seen at $16,655. Ethereum is trading at $1,203 at the time of the writing.
