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The same site that first reported that FTX' former Compliance Officer had ties to an insider online poker cheating scandal has now uncovered that same individual's apparent involvement with a fake electronics website.
CoinGeek warned of Dan Friedberg's shady associations well before the FTX crypto exchange's epic collapse.
It was just a decade ago that audio surfaced whereby Friedberg appeared to be encouraging a coverup of the poker cheating incident that stunned the community a few year's prior.
Media outlets contend that Friedberg acted as the "adult in the room" at FTX, a firm that resembled more of a frat house (complete with orgies) than the billion dollar financial business it was portrayed as prior to its bankruptcy.
During his two year tenure at FTX, Friedberg held four different job titles, the most shocking of which was "Compliance Officer".
Steven Stradbrooke of CoinGeek notes that the one-time UltimateBet attorney has yet to be charged for any wrongdoings tied to FTX. That firm's founder, Sam Bankman-Fried, is now charged with what one U.S. prosecutor called a "fraud of epic proportions". He will be under house detention until his trial.
Stradbrooke reveals in his recent report that Friedberg, a partner at the Seattle-based Fenwick & West LLP, played an active role in reeling in investors.
“We know the owner of Alameda and consider him of the highest reputation in the industry," he once wrote in a letter to prospective investors.
Stradbrooke suggests that Friedberg may have been sought out specifically for his past dealings whereby "FTX could continue dealing with U.S. customers while evading U.S. regulatory scrutiny".
The poker sites he worked with “arranged for the money received from U.S. gamblers to be disguised as payments to hundreds of non-existent online merchants purporting to sell merchandise such as jewelry and golf balls.”
Stradbrooke explains the convoluted funding scheme that appears to be tied to FTX and Bankman-Fried (SBF):
The SEC’s complaint against SBF cited the billions that FTX customers had indirectly deposited to the exchange via a convoluted workaround involving an Alameda subsidiary called North Dimension Inc. SBF directed customers to deposit via North Dimension, whose website offered no indication of any ties to FTX/Alameda, to disguise the fact that these funds were instead going to Alameda (the funds were then credited to FTX customer accounts but not actually transferred to FTX).
North Dimension was incorporated in Delaware in August 2020, its incorporation papers drawn up by none other than Friedberg’s Fenwick & West. Last week, NBC News reported further details on North Dimension’s now-disabled (but archived) website, noting that it “appears to have been a fake electronics retailer.”
Registered in Hong Kong in November 2021, North Dimension’s website is replete with garbled English and most internal links default to the ‘about’ page.
North Dimension's website promised some awesome phones and laptops priced well above their list value with set goal to “build trust in eliminating counterfeits and assisting our users in making informed purchasing decisions.”
And, in case there was any doubt about the links to FTX, North Dimension's ‘contact’ page lists the same Berkeley, California address that FTX’s U.S.-based offshoot FTX US called home.
A second North Dimension website was registered with the promise to bring “the sophistication we have all come to expect from mainstream financial institutions in the realm of cryptocurrencies.”
You can't make this stuff up.
Friedberg has mostly scrubbed his LinkedIn page of any association with FTX.
Tajul Islam of Blitz warns that, while Bankman-Fried is the shiny object everyone is currrently focused on right now, others tied to the scheme are believed to be secretly shifting millions of dollars to several countries. Friedberg is certainly the man with the most experience in this area, though he's probably the most likely to be scrutinized after SBF. Islam refers to the other characters involved with FTX yet to be charged. They include the likes of Ryan Salame, Nishad Singh, Constance Wang Zhe, T’Shae Cooper, Dan Friedberg, Devon Bernard, John J. Ray III, Will Stroud, Constance Wang Zhe, Tom Loverro, Jen Chan, Chris McCann, William MacAskill and Ramnik Arora.
Stradbrooke offers some free advise to Friedberg in closing.
"We strongly suggest that Friedberg hire a lawyer. A good one. Preferably one with a history of upholding the law, not breaking it."
- Jagajeet Chiba, Gambling911.com
