Jan 20 (Reuters) – Federal prosecutors seized nearly $700 million in assets from FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried in January, mostly in the form of Robinhood stock, according to a court filing on Friday.
Bankman-Fried, who is accused of stealing billions of dollars from FTX clients to pay off debts incurred by his cryptocurrency-focused hedge fund, has pleaded not guilty to fraud charges. He is scheduled to stand trial in October.
The Justice Department disclosed the seizure of Robinhood stock earlier this month, but on Friday it provided a more complete list of seized assets, including cash held at various banks and assets held at cryptocurrency exchange Binance.
Ownership of the forfeited Robinhood stock, worth an estimated $525 million, has been the subject of contention between Bankman-Fried, FTX and bankrupt cryptocurrency lender BlockFi.
The most recent asset forfeiture reported by the DOJ occurred on Thursday, when prosecutors seized $94.5 million in cash from an account at Silvergate Bank, which is linked to FTX Digital Markets, a subsidiary of FTX in the Bahamas. The DOJ seized more than $7 million from other Silvergate accounts linked to Bankman-Fried and FTX.
The U.S. Department of Justice previously seized nearly $50 million from the FTX Digital Markets account of Moonstone Bank, a small Washington state bank.
The DOJ also said assets in three Binance accounts linked to Bankman-Fried have been criminally forfeited, but did not provide an estimate of the value of those accounts.
Reporting by Dietrich Knauth; Editing by Noeleen Walder and Daniel Wallis
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