US federal prosecutors seized nearly $700 million in assets from FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried in January, much of it in the form of Robinhood stock, according to court filings Friday.
Bankman-Fried, who has been accused of stealing billions of dollars from FTX clients to pay off debts arising from his crypto-focused hedge fund, has pleaded not guilty to fraud. He is expected to appear in court in October.
The Justice Department disclosed the Robinhood stock forfeiture earlier this month, but it provided a more complete list of the seized assets on Friday, including cash held at other banks. and assets are deposited at the Binance cryptocurrency exchange.
Ownership of the forfeited Robinhood stock, worth about $525 million, is the subject of a dispute between Bankman-Fried, FTX, and bankrupt crypto lender BlockFi.
The most recent forfeiture reported by the DOJ took place on Thursday, when prosecutors seized $94.5 million in cash from an account at Silvergate Bank linked to FTX Digital Markets, subsidiary of FTX in the Bahamas. The DOJ has seized more than $7 million from other Silvergate accounts linked to Bankman-Fried and FTX.
The DOJ previously seized nearly $50 million from an FTX Digital Markets account at Moonstone Bank, a small bank in Washington state.
The DOJ also said that assets in three Binance accounts linked to Bankman-Fried could be subject to criminal forfeiture, but did not provide an estimate of the value in those accounts.
(Reporting by Dietrich Knauth; Editing by Noeleen Walder and Daniel Wallis)
