Much of FTX’s business data, including emails, Slack messages and transaction logs, was held by Sullivan & Cromwell, the law firm that took control of the exchange after it declared bankruptcy.
In a recent filing, Mr Bankman-Fried’s lawyers argued that prosecutors had relied on Sullivan & Cromwell to act as their de facto agent in obtaining documents from the company. The lawyers claimed that by “outsourcing” this process to the company, prosecutors are avoiding their legal responsibility to turn over potentially useful evidence to Mr. Bankman Fried.
The detective work of Sullivan & Cromwell – which has filed bills totaling $55 million in bankruptcy court – is already proving to be beneficial to prosecutors. In a court case in January, Sullivan & Cromwell showed an extract from FTX’s underlying code base, featuring a feature that allowed Alameda to borrow virtually unlimited amounts of money from the exchange.
In an email to Sullivan & Cromwell’s attorneys that month, Mr. Roos to request FTX transaction logs for accounts owned by Mr. Bankman Fried, Mrs. Ellison, Mr. Wang, Mr. Singh and two other people, whose names were redacted, according to court records. He also looked for reports of a group chat on the encrypted messaging app Signal, titled “Donation Processing,” where FTX executives discussed campaign finance matters.
Prosecutors also seized direct evidence from executives in Mr Bankman-Fried’s job. Last month, the FBI executed a search warrant at the $4 million Maryland home of Ryan Salame, a senior FTX executive who donated tens of millions of dollars to Republican candidates, including George Santos, the recently indicted congressman from Long Island, N.Y.
The officers seized Mr Salame’s mobile phone, as well as a phone belonging to his girlfriend, Michelle Bond, a crypto lobbyist, two people with knowledge of the matter said. Ms. Bond unsuccessfully ran for Congress last year as a Republican in another Long Island district.
