FTX sues Scaramucci to recoup money SBF put into showy investments

The lawsuit against the former White House communications director is one of 23 filed in Delaware bankruptcy court on Friday. The plaintiffs also include digital asset exchange Crypto.com and political groups such as FWD.US, which was founded by Mark Zuckerberg, according to court documents.

FTX claims that during the crypto winter of 2022, its founder Sam Bankman Fried “engaged in a year-long influence buying campaign and made lavish and flashy investments.”

“One connection to which Bankman-Fried devoted significant time and money” was Scaramucci, to his well-established financial, political and social network, according to the filing.

FTX is now going after these investments because it claims they “provided little or no benefit,” and “instead only served to bolster BankmanFried’s standing in the worlds of politics and traditional finance.”

The bankrupt cryptocurrency company claims Bankman-Fried invested $67 million in several SkyBridge endeavors in 2022 as Scaramucci was “seeking a bailout.” SkyBridge’s assets under management fell from a 2015 high of $9 billion to $2.2 billion, according to the filing.

A representative for Scaramucci declined to comment.

In September 2022, Bankman Fried and Scaramucci announced this FTX’s investment arm will take a 30% stake in SkyBridge. Financial terms were not disclosed at the time. Scaramucci said at the time that the investment reflected that he was “thinking about the next decade of Skybridge.”

Read more: Scaramucci’s SkyBridge Capital was on the rise, and then along came FTX

Within a few months, FTX filed for bankruptcy and Bankman Fried was arrested in the Bahamas on fraud charges.

The case is FTX Trade. Ltd., Banker. D.D.C. Case No. 22-11068 11/8/24.