Sam Bankman-Fried secretly transferred FTX customer funds to Alameda Research after his trading firm suffered losses in the spring, report says

• Sam Bankman-Fried transferred at least $4 billion in FTX funds to Alameda Research earlier this year, sources told Reuters.
• The money included customer funds as well as those backed by FTX's native token FTT and shares in Robinhood.

Sam Bankman-Fried transferred at least $4 billion from FTX to Alameda Research earlier this year without telling anyone, after his trading firm suffered losses on crypto deals, sources told Reuters.

The money included customer funds as well as funds backed by FTT, which is FTX's native cryptocurrency, and shares of the company's stake in Robinhood, the report said.

In May and June, Alameda was hit with a series of losses, including from a $500 million loan with crypto lender Voyager Digital, which later filed for bankruptcy, according to Reuters.

Bankman-Fried didn't tell others at FTX about the fund transfer, fearing the news would leak, the report added.

Separately, the Wall Street Journal reported FTX lent more than half of its $16 billion in customer funds to Alameda in total, with Bankman-Fried telling an investor this week that Alameda owes FTX about $10 billion.

The Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission opened investigations months ago into whether FTX mishandled customer funds, Bloomberg reported Wednesday. The Justice Department is also investigating, according to the Wall Street Journal.

FTX didn't immediately respond to a request for comment. It also didn't respond to Reuters' requests.

The news adds to the dark cloud growing around Bankman-Fried's crypto empire in the wake of the failed takeover deal with rival Binance.

CoinDesk first reported last week that Alameda Research held a large amount of illiquid FTT on its balance sheet, spurring speculation that the trading firm lacked sufficient liquidity.

FTX halted customer withdrawals earlier this week after about $5 billion worth of withdrawal requests came in on Sunday.

On Tuesday, it agreed to be acquired by Binance, citing a liquidity crunch, but Binance backed out Wednesday after performing due diligence on FTX's financials.

In a series of tweets early Thursday, Bankman-Fried issued a broad mea culpa regarding FTX, and said Alameda is "winding down" its trading.

"They aren't doing any of the weird things that I see on Twitter--and nothing large at all. And one way or another, soon they won't be trading on FTX anymore," he said.