FTX and Alameda Executives Exchanged Sensitive Information

The executives at the now-collapsed crypto exchange FTX and its trading arm Alameda Research are reportedly exchanging secret information using a Signal chat group called “Wirefraud.”

A new report from The Australian Financial Review indicates FTX founders Sam Bankman-Fried and Gary Wang, former FTX director of engineering Nishad Singh and former Alameda CEO Caroline Ellison used the chat group to send encrypted info about operations.

Bankman-Fried denied the story on Twitter on Monday afternoon.

“If this is true then I wasn’t a member of that inner circle (I’m quite sure it’s just false; I have never heard of such a group).”

The denial turned out to be the disgraced co-founder’s final tweet before he was arrested by authorities in The Bahamas later that day. Bahamian law enforcement carried out the arrest at the request of the US government.

The Department of Justice (DOJ) is charging Bankman-Fried with six counts of fraud, one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering, and one additional count of conspiracy to defraud the United States and campaign finance laws, according to a newly unsealed indictment issued by the Southern District of New York.

The fraud charges include conspiracy to commit wire fraud on customers, wire fraud on lenders, commodities fraud, and securities fraud.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has also announced it’s charging the FTX co-founder with defrauding the exchange’s investors.