Advisors to the bankrupt crypto exchange FTX have been disclosing customer transaction and account data to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), according to court documents seen by Bloomberg.
In response to subpoenas issued by various FBI field offices over the past few months, FTX consultants turned over transaction records of specific clients at the bankrupt crypto exchange to authorities.
The FBI requests were revealed in the billing records of Álvarez y Marsal, a consulting firm that acts as financial advisor to FTX. Over the past few months, company staff extracted information from some customers’ transactions for FBI offices in Portland, Philadelphia, Oakland, Minneapolis and Cleveland.
The billing records did not reveal what type of investigation the FBI conducted or who the target was, although one of the records mentions a grand jury subpoena.
In a court filing, Alvarez and Marsal reported that they shared transaction data from cloud computing provider FTX in September in response to a subpoena issued by the FBI’s Philadelphia office. It also conducted investigations into customer accounts and transactions in July, following a request from the FBI’s Oakland office. Additionally, in August, the company extracted customer information related to specific transactions, pursuant to a subpoena from the FBI’s Portland office.
Ultimately, FTX clients will pay for the work. According to Bloomberg, in July, August and September, two consultants billed more than $21,000 for FBI-related services. In total, Alvarez and Marsal have collected nearly $100 million in fees from FTX since November 2022, court records show. The money will be reduced from recoveries for FTX clients.
FTX’s new CEO, John J. Ray III, recently revealed that the exchange’s clients could receive more than 90% of their assets by the end of 2024 as a result of a proposed agreement between FTX creditors and debtors.
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