Joseph Bankman, the father of disgraced cryptocurrency mogul and former billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried, allegedly complained to his son about him only having a salary of $200,000 a year, a fraction of the $1 million he was expecting.
This is according to a lawsuit filed by FTX, the cryptocurrency exchange founded by Bankman-Fried, against his parents. This lawsuit accuses Joseph and Barbara Fried, Sam's mother, of siphoning millions of dollars from FTX for their own benefits and causes.
The lawsuit details a complaint made by Joe to his son about his pay from FTX and how he brought Fried in to mediate the matter. (Related: Sam Bankman-Fried indicted AGAIN for allegedly using $100M in stolen customer funds for political donations.)
The exchange detailed in the lawsuit between Bankman-Fried and his father allegedly took place in January 2022. In emails, Joseph, 68, told the company's head of administration in the United States that he was only getting paid $16,667 a month from the company when he was "supposed to be getting $1M/yr, starting in December," wrote Joe. "So that would be a bit more than $80,000 a month, gross."
Joseph used Sam's mother Barbara to lobby their son to increase their salaries
When Joseph didn't receive any satisfactory answers about his salary from FTX executives, he took his complaints directly to his son, who was also serving as FTX's CEO. He wrote in an email: "Gee, Sam I don't know what to say here. This is the first [I] have heard of the 200K a year salary! Putting Barbara on this."
FTX's lawyers argue that Joseph used Barbara, 71, to lobby their son to increase their salaries. Both he and his wife are already earning sufficiently as professors at Stanford University in California. Joseph and Barbara are both professors at Stanford's law school. Joseph is a specialist in business and corporate law, while Barbara is a professor emeritus and an expert on legal history and theory.
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"In other words, Bankman lobbied his son to massively increase his own salary," wrote FTX's lawyers in the lawsuit. "Bankman's influence paid off, not only for him but for Fried too."
"Within two weeks, Bankman-Fried gifted Bankman and Fried together $10 million in funds originating from Alameda Ltd.," continued the lawyers. Alameda Research, also founded by Bankman-Fried, is a sister company to FTX and the crypto trading firm that played a pivotal role in the FTX empire's demise.
FTX's lawyers further wrote that within three months of Joseph's email to his son, Bankman-Fried handed over the deed to a $16.4 million home in the Bahamas to Joseph and Barbara that was paid for "with funds ultimately provided by FTX Trading."
"Bankman and Fried enjoyed the benefits of more than $90,000 in expenses, paid for by FTX Trading, for their Bahamas residence," continued the lawyers.
The lawsuit further alleges that Joseph donated $5.5 million to Stanford in an effort to "curry favor with and enrich his employer at the FTX Group's expense."
Finally, the suit claims that the couple "either know – or ignored bright red flags revealing – that their son, Bankman-Fried, and other FTX insiders were orchestrating a vast fraudulent scheme."
Joseph and Barbara, through their lawyers, have denied all of FTX's allegations. In a statement, attorneys Sean Heckler and Michael Tremonte, representing Joseph and Barbara, accused FTX of attempting to "intimidate" the couple.
"This is a dangerous attempt to intimidate Joe and Barbara and undermine the jury process just days before their child's trial begins," wrote the lawyers. "These claims are completely false."
Learn the latest about Bankman-Fried and cryptocurrencies at CryptoCult.news.
Watch this clip from "The Glenn Beck Program" on TheBlaze as he questions why Sam Bankman-Fried's campaign finance charge was dropped.
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