Sam Bankman-Fried, who founded

FTX

in 2019, was considered a shambolic boy genius, worth more than US$20 billion at his peak.

In little less than a week, he watched his companies disintegrate into a steaming pile of financial toxic waste. He faces criminal and civil charges in the United States, including money laundering, campaign finance violations and conspiracy to commit wire fraud. He is accused of absconding with billions of dollars of clients’ money. Two of his lieutenants have pleaded guilty to fraud and are expected to testify against him. Bankman-Fried maintains his innocence.

What follows is the most detailed account yet of FTX’s final days. It is based on interviews with people with first-hand knowledge of events, as well as court documents and extensive internal messages and Emails, which have been minimally edited for length and clarity. They show how a tiny group of millennial millionaires and life-long friends panicked and despaired as they ran a US$40 billion company into the ground.

In the third and final instalment of the saga, as bankruptcy proceedings begin, Bankman-Fried finds himself alone as he is shut out of the company and deserted by staff and long-time friends.

Read the first and second instalment of the saga

The unravelling begins

Nov. 10, 21:48

Ryne Miller (FTX US’s general counsel) to SBF: Hello sir — I sent you the doc as DocuSign. I would super appreciate your signing it. Thank you again for getting this piece done.

Ryne Miller to Sam Bankman-Fried:
Missed call 22:14

Nov. 10, 22.36

Ryne Miller to SBF: Hi there – a gentle ping to see if you could sign the DocuSign I sent. Happy to discuss it with you if helpful. Thanks again.

Nov. 11, 00:21

SBF: Hey sorry looking it over!

Nov. 11, 00:33

Ryne Miller: We need this one. It lets the organization start to be put in place to move forward, and allows the people trying to help begin to actually help… Folks really need to start the next phase. Thank you in advance for your consideration of that perspective.

In the early hours of Friday, FTX’s Australian subsidiary was forced into insolvency. The unravelling envisioned by the lawyers had begun. But Bankman-Fried still wouldn’t sign. His phone buzzed incessantly with messages and calls from an army of lawyers and staff.

Signal: Nov.. 11, 01:44

Tim Wilson: Sam, we just got placed in “voluntary” bankruptcy in Australia by the board

SBF: understood

Tim Wilson: Sorry — but this is now getting even more urgent

Tim Wilson: Sam… I want to help get you comfortable here, but it needs to happen asap.

Miller pasted a screenshot of an email from Andy Dietderich

at S&C

in the chat:

Email — Nov. 10, 22:36

From: Andy Dietderich

to: Sam Bankman-Fried

Can we please have an update? We have many people in NY and Delaware waiting to proceed. We have done the work we can without Sam’s signature. If Sam is not going to sign the instruction appointing Ray tonight, we will send people home and regroup in the morning. Australia has commenced voluntary proceedings and we can expect more shortly. If Sam is signing relatively promptly, we can stay around. Please let us know promptly if we should continue to wait. Andy

Signal – Nov. 11, 02:50

Ryne Miller: @SBF fresh doc sent, per instructions from your counsel. Thanks. Let me know

The FTX founder was nothing if not convinced that he was smarter than everyone else. He had held out for days against the advice of the company’s remaining lawyers, then its outside counsel and finally his own attorneys. But what changed his mind was mass desertion, first of his staff and then of the long-time friends around him. By Thursday night, only a half dozen loyalists, including Constance and Gary, remained.

Bankman-Fried was a general without an army. The single-page legal document in front of him gave Ray total control over FTX and its linked companies, with power to file them for bankruptcy. Just after 4 a.m. on Friday morning, he clicked the DocuSign link.

Nov. 11, 07:37

Ryne Miller:

The bankruptcy filings for Alameda and FTX.com will begin to start this a.m. Understand that @Gary Wang did amazing work last night to get many aspects of the site in better shape. The entire FTX ecosystem looks forward to being able to rely on folks here to provide similar information and consulting help in coming days.

Bankman-Fried remained at the Albany. On Sunday, Nov. 13, he and Wang were locked out of FTX’s systems by Ray’s team. Bankman-Fried privately fumed about what he considered “the adults’” broken promises, namely, to consult on fundraising efforts and the appointment of directors. Over email, Bankman-Fried appealed to Ray for a role in the company’s unwinding.

Email — Nov. 13

From: Sam Bankman-Fried

To: John Ray

Hey John, I’d be super happy to chat — here, phone, etc.! Sam

Email — Nov. 14

From: Sam Bankman-Fried

To: John Ray

I’d actually love to talk to you, John, and don’t need my counsel to talk first — I’m ready/prepared to talk, and think it would be very constructive and helpful for coordination between offices and entities for us to have a productive communicative relationship — or at last to explore having one. Sam

Email – Nov. 15

From: Sam Bankman-Fried

To: John Ray

Hey John, I’d really love to talk. We’ve been having a lot of trouble responding to the Bahamian provisional liquidators’ questions because we keep getting locked out of our systems, and we’re not getting much of a response on that. We’d really love to access to our 1password accounts, and GCP, and AWS. I’d also just love to talk with you and synch up so hopefully we can work constructively together… Please reach out anytime. Sam

Email — Dec. 12

From: Sam Bankman-Fried

To: John Ray

Hi Mr Ray, I have potentially pertinent information concerning future opportunities and financing for FTX and its creditors. I also believe that I have relevant financial information about FTX US, and further that I have potentially relevant regulatory information concerning FTX. I would love to talk to you, whether it’s via email or phone, and to work constructively with you and the Chapter 11 team to do what’s best for customers… Sam.

Email – Jan. 2

From: Sam Bankman-Fried

To: John Ray

Mr Ray, I know things haven’t gotten off on the right foot, but I really do want to be helpful… As I’m guessing you’ve heard, I’m in NYC for the next day. I’d love to meet up while I’m here — even if just to say hi… Sam

Ray never replied.

Prisoner in Palo Alto

In December 2022, Sam Bankman-Fried was arrested in the Bahamas and charged with orchestrating “one of the biggest financial frauds in American history.” After nine nights in custody in Nassau, he was extradited to the U.S., granted bail and confined to his parents’ house. Caroline Ellison and Gary Wang have turned cooperating witnesses against him. Singh may be next. On Jan. 3, the day after Bankman-Fried told Ray he was “available” to meet in New York, he appeared in a Manhattan court to plead not guilty.

Before meeting him in Palo Alto, the last time I spoke to Bankman-Fried in person was at the height of his wealth and power, on the balcony of a beach-front restaurant at the Albany. Sitting in his parents’ house, he seemed remarkably similar. He is still a ball of nervous energy, earnest, awkward and apparently eager to please. As we chatted, he tapped on his laptop, checking baseball news and playing Storybook Brawl, a computer game. He said he had no hard feelings towards friends who fled or turned against him as FTX crumbled. “It was an incredibly tough situation, and it’s not what people signed up for. And I don’t begrudge people not wanting to stick through it.”

Since moving home, Bankman-Fried has occupied a book-lined room where he has parked a desk with two huge monitors in the middle of the floor. To one side, there is a sofa where he frequently sleeps, even though his bedroom is down the hall. When he shifts to sit cross-legged in his swivel chair, a characteristic pose, he has to adjust the chunky black ankle monitor he wears as a condition of his confinement.

He complains of too much down time and the opportunity to stew. In his den, there is a marble slab table with two chess sets set up side by side. Who does he play with? “Right now, no one. It is sort of there prospectively as much as anything else,” he said. He spends his days on calls with lawyers and journalists, or writing long and rambling reflections on what happened. So far, he has produced more than 1,000 pages, he told me.

By speaking to the press, Bankman-Fried has shredded the playbook for criminal defendants. He has increasingly fixated on the bankruptcy filing as the pivotal error. On Twitter and in his writing and interviews, he rails against Miller and S&C for pushing FTX into bankruptcy, blaming them for shutting off rescue routes he insists would have let him pay back customers. Bankman-Fried claims he had no idea about Wilson’s or Ray’s history with S&C and claims this strengthens his argument that S&C conspired to force him into bankruptcy, appoint its hand-picked CEO and pocket millions in legal fees. (S&C, Miller and Ray have rejected his claims.) “He still thinks that if bankruptcy had never been filed, everything would have been OK,” someone who knows Bankman-Fried well said.

  • The bizarre and brutal final hours of FTX — Part One
  • The bizarre and brutal final hours of FTX — Part Two

Bankman-Fried admitted he has been dwelling on what will happen if he’s found guilty of charges that carry a potential life sentence. Next to the chess sets is a stack of printed legal documents. Thinking back to the final days of FTX, he said it appeared to him that his friends and advisers were warped by the pressure. “It felt to me like everyone around me had lost their minds all at once. And everyone is behaving bizarrely poorly,” he said. “I did feel sort of like there were no adults left in the room, like everyone is a child now.”

Bankman-Fried’s defence is that he screwed up. But he still sounds like a kid expecting to be slapped on the wrist. Outside his sanctuary in Palo Alto, most of the world has concluded that he is an adult and that he is at fault, leaving only the tiny oasis of his parents’ home where the opposite might still be true.

Read the first and second instalment of the saga

Joshua Oliver is the FT’s asset management reporter. Additional reporting by William Langley and Chan Ho-him in Hong Kong, Sujeet Indap in New York and Nikou Asgari and Kadhim Shubber in London

© 2023 The Financial Times Ltd.