(Reuters) – Federal prosecutors are investigating an alleged cybercrime that drained more than $370 million from crypto exchange FTX hours after it filed for bankruptcy, Bloomberg News reported on Tuesday citing a person familiar with the case.
The criminal probe into the stolen assets, launched by the Department of Justice is separate from fraud case against FTX co-founder Sam Bankman-Fried, the report added.
A spokesperson for the Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office said he could not confirm or comment on the issue, while DoJ and FTX did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.
FTX filed for U.S. bankruptcy last month and Bankman-Fried stepped down as chief executive, after traders pulled billions from the platform in three days and rival exchange Binance abandoned a rescue deal.
The U.S. Department of Justice accused Bankman-Fried of causing billions of dollars of losses related to FTX, which a U.S. prosecutor called a “fraud of epic proportions.”
Bankman-Fried founded FTX in 2019 and rode a boom in the values of bitcoin and other digital assets to become a billionaire several times over as well as an influential donor to U.S. political campaigns.
The FTX collapse has fanned fears about the future of the crypto industry after the beleaguered exchange outlined a “severe liquidity crisis”.
(Reporting by Manya Saini in Bengaluru; Editing by Shailesh Kuber)
