Sam Bankman-Fried stole billions for shopping sprees and risky investments, former FTX executive says

Nishad Singh, a former executive at cryptocurrency exchange FTX, testified on Monday that his friend and former boss, Sam Bankman-Fried, knowingly siphoned billions of dollars in customer funds to go on spending sprees, which included pricey real estate purchases and endorsement deals with celebrities like Super Bowl champion Tom Brady. 

Singh, who was classmates and close friends with Bankman-Fried’s younger brother Gabriel, told jurors he had had “a lot of admiration and respect” for Bankman-Fried but it “eroded” over time. 

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He added that he, Bankman-Fried, and other FTX and Alameda Research executives including Gary Wang, Ryan Salame, and Caroline Ellison had knowingly defrauded customers and investors. 

Singh, the former head of engineering at FTX, is the latest person in Bankman-Fried’s tight-knit circle of friends to testify against him. Prosecutors allege that Bankman-Fried told Singh and FTX co-founder Wang to create the computer code that would allow Alameda, the crypto hedge fund Bankman-Fried owned, to borrow vast sums of money from FTX customers.

Singh has already pleaded guilty to fraud and conspiracy and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors. 

“Sam is a formidable character, brilliant,” Singh said from the witness stand. “So I had a lot of admiration and respect for him. Over time a lot of that eroded.”

Bankman-Fried is accused of illegally diverting billions of dollars from client accounts for his personal use, which also included making risky trades at Alameda. He allegedly spent millions on illegal donations to lawmakers on Capitol Hill and their affiliated political action committees as part of a plan to buy power and influence crypto regulation.

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Bankman-Fried has pleaded not guilty to two counts of fraud and five conspiracy counts tied to FTX’s 2022 implosion. If convicted of all the charges against him, he could be sentenced to more than 100 years in prison.

Singh, who lived in a penthouse in the Bahamas with Bankman-Fried, also testified that Bankman-Fried got angry with him after he cast doubt on FTX and tried to reign in the one-time billionaire’s spending habits. Bankman-Fried claimed the issue with FTX wasn’t his spending but that the “real insidious problem” was Singh.

“It was pretty humiliating,” Singh said.

He also told jurors he was “embarrassed and ashamed” of an investment FTX made in K5, a firm that had ties to many celebrities, because it went against FTX’s corporate culture of effective altruism. Singh said that Bankman-Fried attended a Super Bowl party organized by K5 and gushed about the guest list, which included Jeff Bezos, Hillary Clinton, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Kris and Kendall Jenner. 

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Singh said he was worried about partnering with the California-based company and was “shocked” by the several-hundred-million-dollar investment involved. 

Bankman-Fried spent most of Singh’s testimony staring at his laptop.