Prosecutors say Bankman-Fried stole funds from FTX customers, in part, by secretly ordering the programming of “special features” that gave Alameda—his crypto trading firm—the ability to treat FTX as a giant slush fund. Court filings have revealed a line buried deep in FTX’s code that allowed Alameda to have a negative balance of as much as $65 billion on the exchange.
“Just wanted to point out that there are currently a few places in the…code base where Alameda gets special treatment in one way or another,” Jim Outen, a LedgerX employee, wrote in a May 5, 2022, message viewed by The Wall Street Journal.