The US government is trying to confiscate cryptocurrency associated with Sam Bankman-Fried's activities, despite him being in prison for almost a year

On Tuesday, November 12, US prosecutors filed a lawsuit in a New York court demanding the return of digital assets that FTX management used to pay bribes

The US government is attempting to seize cryptocurrency linked to Sam Bankman-Fried's activities, despite the former FTX CEO being imprisoned for nearly a year.

On Tuesday, November 12, US prosecutors filed a civil forfeiture complaint in a New York court, seeking to seize digital assets that FTX executives allegedly used to bribe a Chinese official. The funds in question are cryptocurrency holdings — Solana, Cardano, Ripple, Internet Computer, and Avalanche — that are currently stored on the Binance exchange and valued at approximately $18,5 million.

Bankman-Fried is currently serving a 25-year prison sentence after pleading guilty to charges that he misused FTX customer assets for personal gain, including purchasing luxury real estate, making political donations, and engaging in risky investments. Notably, the charge related to bribing a foreign official was dropped.

However, prosecutors allege that in early 2021, Chinese law enforcement froze about $1 billion in two local crypto exchange accounts belonging to FTX's affiliate trading arm, Alameda Research. In an effort to unfreeze the assets, Sam Bankman-Fried offered a bribe of Tether in the amount of $40 million to Chinese officials, according to the complaint. The Alameda accounts were subsequently unfrozen.

After confirming that the accounts had been unfrozen, prosecutors allege that Bankman-Fried authorized additional payments of tens of millions of dollars in cryptocurrency to complete the bribe payments.

In her testimony, former Alameda Research CEO Caroline Ellison stated that the total bribe payments amounted to $150 million.