A barrage of criminal charges were levied against Sam Bankman-Fried, founder and former CEO of failed cryptocurrency exchange FTX. Bankman-Fried, who was scheduled to testify in front of the House Committee on Financial Services today, wasn’t able to make it—an unfortunate side effect of him being detained by Bahamian authorities yesterday afternoon. Nevertheless, the hearing proceeded without him, and the new CEO tasked with unwinding the whole mess at FTX, John J. Ray III, testified for nearly four hours.

Last night, Bahamian police arrested Sam Bankman-Fried after receiving notice from the U.S. government that charges had been filed against him, and that he was likely to be extradited.

Those charges had been filed by the U.S. Attorney’s Office of the Southern District of New York, a frequent flier on W3IGG for its comparatively active role in prosecuting cryptocurrency scams and frauds. The SDNY indictment was unsealed today, and includes a list of eight charges: wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud on customers, wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud on lenders, conspiracy to commit commodities fraud, conspiracy to commit securities fraud, conspiracy to commit money laundering, and conspiracy to defraud the United States and violate campaign finance laws.

Altogether, the SDNY paints a picture in which Sam Bankman-Fried knowingly schemed to misappropriate customer funds from FTX for personal use and use at Alameda, and lied to lenders about the financial state of his businesses. The SDNY also charged that SBF had violated campaign finance law by exceeding contribution limits and donating to candidates and committees in other peoples’ names.

Shortly after the SDNY unsealed their indictment, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission each filed their own charges.

The SEC, unsurprisingly, charged SBF with securities fraud for allegedly defrauding investors in FTX. The SEC alleges that he spent years concealing from investors that FTX customer funds were being directed to Alameda; that Alameda received special treatment in its operations on the FTX exchange (namely, exemption from some risk management limitations, and a “virtually unlimited” line of credit); and that there was undisclosed risk as a result of FTX’s exposure to Alameda’s highly illiquid assets, including their substantial holdings of FTT. The SEC also alleges that SBF commingled customer funds at Alameda “to make undisclosed venture investments, lavish real estate purchases, and large political donations.”

The CFTC complaint names SBF, FTX, and Alameda, and charges them with fraud, as well as fraudulent misstatements of material fact and material omissions. The lengthy complaint goes into more detail than the SEC complaint, but covers many of the same allegations: that SBF portrayed FTX as reliable and secure, while in reality he was hiding misappropriation of customer funds and enormous risk due to Alameda’s status on the FTX platform.

In a press conference held this afternoon (video, my Twitter thread), both the SDNY and the SEC each very clearly signaled that they expect to file more charges in the near future.

Meanwhile, SBF showed up for a court hearing in The Bahamas, where his counsel asked the judge to consider granting him bail. The lawyers’ argument seemed to come down to “if he was going to run, he would have by now.” However, if SBF’s statement to me yesterday is to be believed (and that’s a big if with any statement from SBF), he also hadn’t put much thought into the idea that he might be at risk of arrest.

His parents attended the hearing. Per CoinDesk, “They appeared to oscillate between dejection and defiance, at times holding their heads in their hands and clasping their hands. Bankman-Fried’s mother audibly laughed several times when her son was referred to as a “fugitive” and his father occasionally put his fingers in his ears as if to drown out the sound of the proceedings.”

Huh.

SBF’s arrest certainly threw a wrench in the House hearing scheduled for this morning, as SBF had finally agreed to testify and was expected to appear virtually for questioning.

Some Congresspeople directly addressed this, questioning why the SDNY would not wait to arrest SBF until after he had testified under oath for hours in front of Congress—seemingly a prosecutor’s dream. “I wonder why a prosecutor wouldn’t want to potentially add ‘lying to Congress’ to accompany the list of charges against Mr. Bankman-Fried,” mused Representative Rose (R-TN). Representative Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) suggested that she believed SBF’s arrest might have been a direct response to Ray’s testimony being published last night. Representative Timmons (R-SC) wondered aloud why “thirty-six hours before he was scheduled to testify before this Committee for hours on end, did the SDNY send a provisional arrest warrant to the Bahamian government to facilitate his arrest, to preclude his testimony which would have been incredibly helpful in the prosecution of Sam Bankman-Fried?”

Asked a similar question in a later press conference, US Attorney Damian Williams said that he had filed the charges last Wednesday (December 7) and that SBF had been indicted last Friday (December 9), and that the “timing was dictated by law enforcement” and unrelated to the Congressional testimony.

The hearing went on without SBF, although his statement was made available (and later leaked online). The Congresspeople were not exactly enthused by how he had planned to open:

“Absolutely insulting, “ said Representative Cleaver (D-MO).

Without SBF in attendance, John J. Ray III fielded all the questions. They were of varying quality—some Congresspeople seemed well-briefed and well-informed, whereas others simply made Ray repeat things he’d already said in his statement. Representative Perlmutter (D-CO) spent a minute or so of his allotted time trying to figure out if dogecoin was pronounced “doe-gee-