{"id":1432709,"date":"2023-10-13T19:20:00","date_gmt":"2023-10-13T23:20:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/?p=1432709"},"modified":"2023-10-13T19:20:00","modified_gmt":"2023-10-13T23:20:00","slug":"that-seems-pretty-bad-alameda-employee-quit-shortly-after-hearing-about-ftx-backchannel-loans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/that-seems-pretty-bad-alameda-employee-quit-shortly-after-hearing-about-ftx-backchannel-loans\/1432709\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;That Seems Pretty Bad&#8221;: Alameda Employee Quit Shortly After Hearing About FTX Backchannel Loans"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span class=\"field field--name-title field--type-string field--label-hidden\">&#8220;That Seems Pretty Bad&#8221;: Alameda Employee Quit Shortly After Hearing About FTX Backchannel Loans<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"clearfix text-formatted field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field__item\">\n<p>In an &#8220;all hands on deck&#8221; meeting at Alameda Research in November 2022, Caroline Ellison revealed to her co-workers that Sam Bankman-Fried had supposedly authorized a raid on FTX customer cash to repay the company&#8217;s loans.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>In the recorded meeting, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ft.com\/content\/2be2c28b-a920-483f-9b74-b873409c778e?segmentId=b0d7e653-3467-12ab-c0f0-77e4424cdb4c\">reported on by\u00a0<\/a><em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.ft.com\/content\/2be2c28b-a920-483f-9b74-b873409c778e?segmentId=b0d7e653-3467-12ab-c0f0-77e4424cdb4c\">Financial Times<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>on Thursday,\u00a0Alameda software developer Christian Drappi &#8211; who testified yesterday &#8211; can be heard expressing the type of obvious concern one would have in such a situation.\u00a0\u201cI\u2019m sure this wasn\u2019t just a Yolo thing,\u201d he said to Ellison in the meeting.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>When asked in the meeting who approved the use of customer funds, Ellison replied:\u00a0\u201cUm\u2009.\u2009.\u2009.\u2009Sam, I guess.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Drappi testified that he then pressed Ellison about whether or not Alameda borrowed cash via the normal &#8220;spot margin book&#8221; from FTX, but Ellison told him that the loans had been made through another &#8220;special back channel&#8221;.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Drappi replied: &#8220;That seems pretty bad&#8221; and quit, with other staff members, shortly thereafter.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>It wasn&#8217;t long thereafter that Ellison opened up to her staff about how dire the situation with FTX and Alameda was.\u00a0\u201cI\u2019m sure this is not that fun for you, but I certainly appreciate how open you\u2019ve been,\u201d one employee said to her.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/cms.zerohedge.com\/s3\/files\/inline-images\/ellison%20101323.jpg?itok=n4ZeksMt\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Recall, before Drappi took the stand, we <a href=\"https:\/\/www.zerohedge.com\/markets\/draft-do-not-publish-ellison-testimony-day-3?ref=biztoc.com\">highlighted Caroline Ellison&#8217;s testimony<\/a> from Thursday, where she\u00a0detailed more interactions with Alameda employees and how SBF was &#8220;freaking out&#8221; over not being able to raise cash from the Saudis.<\/p>\n<p>Among the items brought to light on day 3 of her testimony was the claim that SBF wouldn&#8217;t let her quit when she wanted to. Ellison said in court:\u00a0\u201cHe said I couldn\u2019t I was too important to Alameda and I should stay at Alameda.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>On Thursday Ellison said she admitted to Alameda employees that the company likely wasn&#8217;t going to make it:\u00a0\u201cA lot of employees had been asking me about what was going on or what the implications was for them. I was hoping that some might stay, but if my goal was to get them to stay, I would have asked them to stay. My goal was to inform Alameda employees what had been going on and what the implications were.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>She detailed more on Thursday about how SBF was &#8220;freaking out&#8221; about not being able to raise money from Mohammed bin Salman:\u00a0\u201cHe told me he went to the Middle East and tried to raise funds there but it didn\u2019t sound like he had success.\u201d We had detailed in yesterday&#8217;s testimony that MBS was one place where FTX was potentially looking to raise capital.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Ellison again talked about how she was worried about Alameda&#8217;s lenders recalling loans in summer 2022. Talking about the 7 alternate balance sheets she used with FTX to lie about the company&#8217;s financial position, Ellison said Thursday:\u00a0\u201cI don\u2019t recall if we discussed all of them, I know we discussed some.&#8221;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>      <span class=\"field field--name-uid field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden\"><a title=\"View user profile.\" href=\"https:\/\/cms.zerohedge.com\/users\/tyler-durden\" class=\"username\">Tyler Durden<\/a><\/span><br \/>\n<span class=\"field field--name-created field--type-created field--label-hidden\">Fri, 10\/13\/2023 &#8211; 15:20<\/span><\/p>\n<p>\u200b<a href=\"https:\/\/www.zerohedge.com\/markets\/seems-pretty-bad-alameda-employee-quit-shortly-after-hearing-about-ftx-backchannel-loans\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"\" rel=\"noopener\">https:\/\/www.zerohedge.com\/markets\/seems-pretty-bad-alameda-employee-quit-shortly-after-hearing-about-ftx-backchannel-loans<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;That Seems Pretty Bad&#8221;: Alameda Employee Quit Shortly After Hearing About FTX Backchannel Loans In an &#8220;all hands on deck&#8221; meeting at Alameda Research in&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1432709","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","wpcat-1-id"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbimBl-60Id","jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1432709","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1432709"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1432709\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1432709"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1432709"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1432709"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}