The management of Alameda, the sister company of FTX, wanted to launder $1.7 million worth of cryptocurrency assets.
Alameda Research can be accused of many things. But not that we wouldn’t try everything to make the assets, however generated, disappear from the scene by all means.
Alameda Research suspended funds have been reactivated
The Arkham Crypto Intelligence Analysis Service tweeted recentlyyou will have one within 24 hours “I’ve noticed a number of interesting movements in the Alameda wallets.” Crypto wallets have been dormant for several weeks following the announcement of the bankruptcy proceedings of FTX, the sister company of Alameda. And then suddenly one evening they are”Wakes up‘ wrote Arkham’s blockchain analysts.
Their investigations revealed that in the very first batch, over $1 million worth of crypto assets were sent to various crypto service providers to launder the money.
Background to Alameda Research & FTX Bankruptcy
As known, there is a class action lawsuit pending against Alameda and FTX in the United States, which many investors who have been defrauded of their money have filed. After the FTX trading platform went bankrupt, many former clients tried to save at least some of the money they had invested. Whether they will succeed remains to be seen.
Caroline Ellison, deputy chief executive of Almeda Research, had already faced seven counts of fraud and money laundering as of mid-December. Ellison has already admitted some of the allegations. FTX and Alameda Research were founded by Sam Bankman-Fried. The industry used to call it “amazing child“. Bankman-Fried was arrested in the Bahamas in mid-December and then extradited to the United States. His lawyers must now try to prevent a possible prison sentence of up to 115 years for fraud.
The moment of the transfers is more than visible
Interestingly, the sudden revival of Alameda wallets happened just days after Sam Bankman Fried was released on bail. The alleged scammer was apparently trying to siphon off as much money as possible and was using several crypto mixers for his criminal purposes. At first, strangers transferred wallets with Ethereum cryptocurrency. The wallets were divided into smaller ones, each holding no more than $200,000.
After that, a large number of smaller wallets were sent to online crypto exchanges FixedFoat and ChangeNOW.
ChangeNOW has now announced on its own blog that it is (allegedly) working closely with investigators “to uncover illicit fund flows while closely monitoring community alerts for funds with suspicious traces.” Believe it or not, after all, exchanges make money when you trade one cryptocurrency for another. The higher the value of the assets traded, the higher the commission.
Smart, but not smart enough
Alameda Research’s management actually handled the whole thing with great skill. A wallet was used, for example, to exchange stablecoins. Wallet assets were first exchanged for Tether (USDT) and then sent to FixedFloat.
A total of approximately $800,000 in coins was exchanged through Mixer, while additional funds were channeled through other methods. Overall, transfers totaling $1.7 million were observed. This equates to approximately 1.58 million euros. Not much compared to the amount that disappeared in advance. But that might be enough to make a living from it abroad. Ideally in a country without extradition treaty with the United States.
In the community, the actions of scammers and some hackers caused a stir. Many consider the timing of money transfers to be very striking. Other observers criticized the use of tumblers (crypto mixing services) and the failure of authorities to do anything about the scam. But the Causa Alameda or FTX search is far from over one way or the other. It will be interesting to see what else happens in this regard…
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