FTX Authorized Expert Dan Friedberg’s Ties to Inappropriate Electronic Web Pages Have Online Poker Echoes

FTX’s former chief compliance officer, Daniel S. Friedberg, has yet to be charged for his role in the digital asset trading crash, but his story of criminal online poker sites seems destined to catch up with him in the end. The Wall Street Journal has recently reported on the trading history of all the thumbs at Alameda Be teach, the market maker of the digital asset exchange FTX, both owned by Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF). In mid-December, SBF was once again criminally and civilly indicted by the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ), the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), and the Commodity Futures Exchange (CFTC) for engaging in fraud and money laundering to prolong the inevitable collapse of its failed ‘crypto’ ventures. The WSJ reported that SBF had netted hundreds of traders with deep pockets in 2018, while the hapless Alameda traders incurred significant losses by constantly misjudging how the cryptocurrency market would move. To jumpstart these fundraising efforts, Friedberg, an associate of Seattle-based Fenwick & West LLP, wrote a letter to potential investors, assuring them that “everyone knows the owner of Alameda and considers him the best recognition in the world.” FTX launched within the next three hundred and sixty-five days, and Friedberg was eventually named its chief regulatory officer (Friedberg also served as Alameda’s chief legal counsel). The appointment was made frankly amusing by Friedberg’s former tenure with Final Bet (UB), an online gaming site that, along with its sister site Absolute Poker (AP), was involved in internal cheating scandals that stole thousands and thousands of dollars from poker players. Friedberg actively conspired to cover up the scandal and undercut the amount of restitution owed to affected players.

However- provocative.

The authorized Tethers expert admits that he worked with FTX’s common lawyer and the strategy that earned him a lot. He is talking about Daniel Friedberg. Daniel Friedberg has moved on to once caught on audio recording conspiring with his client to cover up a $1T4T50 million fraud. https://t.co/gYIprTyX6a

pic.twitter.com/bBgQ41P1PB— Bitfinex'ed ????????? Cassandra???? (@Bitfinexed)

December 25, 2022 The 2 sites were left on their backs after being among the indicted by the DoJ on April 15, 2011, which has come to be known as ‘Black Friday’ in the online gambling world. The representative sites were accused (among a number of issues) of money laundering through a system that “arranged for money obtained from American players to be disguised as payments to numerous non-existent online retailers purporting to sell merchandise such as jewelry and golf balls.” Friedberg was apparently intimately aware of this fashion for financial subterfuge and may very well presumably and effectively have been the reason why SBF became so eager to use it. Bahamas-based FTX/Alameda appears to have adapted this methodology so that FTX can presumably continue to deal with U.S. customers while avoiding U.S. regulatory scrutiny. The SEC’s complaint against SBF cited the billions that FTX customers had indirectly deposited into the exchange through a complicated workaround that prompted an Alameda subsidiary called North Dimension Inc. to instead go to Alameda (the funds were then credited to FTX customer accounts, but were never actually transferred to FTX). North Dimension moved to Delaware in August 2020, its incorporation documents drafted by none other than Friedberg’s Fenwick & West. Last week, NBC Knowledge reported additional insignificant impressions on the now-deactivated North Dimension web pages (but archived), noting that it “appears to be an unsuitable electronics retailer.” Registered in Hong Kong in November 2021, North Dimension’s web pages are filled with broken English and mostly default links to its ‘about’ website. The listing featured phones and laptops with prices always some distance above their list price, while satirically declaring its goal to “believe in removing counterfeits and helping our users make informed purchasing choices.” The listing website

'contact' lists the same Berkeley, California, address to FTX's wholly US-based offshoot FTX US known as Housing.

In October 2022, legally a month before the FTX financial loss was filed, 2nd Northern Dimension modified its web pages once registered in Ontario, Canada, with a dot-org address. This basic space includes an ‘about’ website that purports to mean “a financial products and services company” that offers “skewed and stable fund management products and services, liquidity, and price processing.” Laying it out thick, this Northern Dimension promises to bring “the sophistication that we now all have to experience from major financial institutions to the cryptocurrency realm.” Ahem. The failed Black Friday poker companies employed identical schemes, “arranging fake companies and websites to hide payments” sent to the poker sites. These fake company names would “strongly imply that the transaction has nothing to do with” online poker and would use whatever names “the processor could obtain authorized by the financial institution.” (In May, incidentally, well into 2021, SBF went on a rampage announcing that Alameda had appended the name ‘Be Taught’ to wires that banks were more likely to be willing to do business with an ‘educational institute’ than with a cryptocurrency exchange.) Rats overboard! Friedberg is no stranger to US authorities, having been directly named in a ‘cease and desist’ letter by the Federal Deposit Insurance Company (FDIC) last August. FTX US was once one of a number of companies slapped with the FDIC for falsely suggesting that customer deposits were FDIC-insured. As such, it remains something of a mystery as to why, given his centrality to the FTX/Alameda saga, Friedberg should even be charged with any crime. However, incidentally, the DoJ and others consider Friedberg to be too inept a lawyer to be complicit in SBF’s crimes. For example, Friedberg does not always appear to have a solid legal background. Quickly after sending the FTX financial sacrifice, he tried retroactively apply an 'out of the whisper' region in a speech with NBC News. When NBC identified the inapplicability of that region, Friedberg ignored NBC’s subsequent requests for comment. (That will introduce them.) In the meantime, U.S. authorities appear intent on bringing the hammer down on all FTX/Alameda executives, so Friedberg, whose whereabouts are currently unknown, remains in unparalleled danger. And with a growing desire for firm bigwigs already cooperating with authorities — Alameda CEO Caroline Ellison and FTX co-founder Gary Wang in the U.S., FTX Digital Markets co-CEO Ryan Salame in the Bahamas — those who arrive late will apparently guarantee the window’s full seats.

“As an aside, this article was modified at one time by the author Jacob Silverman (@SilvermanJacob), who tweeted on Tuesday expressing his wish that someone would shed more light on the Daniel S. Friedberg/Stuart Hoegner nexus.”

Thanks for writing! https://t.co/Pw3li5BdZy— Jacob Silverman (@SilvermanJacob) November 20, 2022 This space has previously speculated that, given that there is no one above him in the FTX/Alameda pyramid, SBF is more likely to provide the feds with some dirt on his best friends in the Binance Trading or the Tether stablecoin. Both companies have closets positively full of skeletons and their previously close relationships with SBF put them off under threat of SBF taking half on their ‘ask for cooperation’ card. That is, unless Friedberg gets there first. Tether’s hotshot advisor is one Stuart Hoegner, who previously worked with Friedberg at Final Bet. After Black Friday, the two lawyers reinvented themselves as crypto consultants and, as some long-distance support in 2013, Friedberg moved on to publicly boast to Bitcoin conference attendees that he “works closely with Stuart on most of these issues.” So let's evaluate: Tether's vital authorized expert is Stuart Hoegner, from the UltimateBet poker cheating scandal. FTX's Common Counsel/Chief Compliance Officer, Daniel Friedberg, is also part of the UltimateBet poker cheating scandal. Let's take a look at UltimateBet's domain name. Although provocative. pic.twitter.com/gGtjv7v7eB— Bitfinex'ed ???????? Cassandra ???? (@Bitfinexed) December 10, 2022 SBF estimates that Friedberg may also be in a position to shed more light on Alameda’s irregular decision in early 2022 to acquire a $10 million stake in FBH Corp, which acquired a small bank in Washington state the previous three hundred and sixty-five days ago. FBH is owned by Jean Chalopin, chairman of Bahamas-based Deltec Bank & Trust, whose ranks of buyers include Alameda, FTX and Tether. The acquisition of a stake in a small bank has become another key feature of the online poker allegations. John Campos, vice chairman/part-owner of Utah’s SunFirst Bank, agreed to miscode online poker payments to escape scrutiny from banking regulators. In the trade, SunFirst secured a $10 million investment – ​​coincidentally (or not), a similar amount that Alameda invested in FBH. Although SunFirst eventually turned into a stinging one by the feds, this tactic allowed FBH $200 million in poker payouts to get where they wanted. And with SBF increasingly set on cash as Alameda’s heinous gambling continued, Friedberg – who would have been very aware of SunFirst’s play – may, presumably, indeed be in a position to suggest alternative ideas for how certain clients might, presumably, also proceed to funnel new deposits to FTX. If he hasn’t already, we strongly suggest that Friedberg hire a qualified professional. A real one. Preferably someone with a track record of following the law, not breaking it. Be Aware CoinGeek's Crypto Crime Cartel series, which investigates the rowing of groups – from BitMEX to Binance, Bitcoin.com, Blockstream, Shapeshift, Coinbase, Ripple, Ethereum, FTX, and Tether — which co-opted the digital asset revolution and turned alternative precision into a minefield for naive (and even experienced) market players. Stylish for Bitcoin? Check out CoinGeek's Bitcoin for the inexperienced part, the ultimate resource manual to learn more about Bitcoin—as initially envisioned by Satoshi Nakamoto—and blockchain.