Convicted scammer Anna Sorokin thinks Sam Bankman-Fried’s media apology tour is insincere garbage, she told Insider, believing he’s trying to lay the groundwork for a legal defense over his role in FTX’s meltdown and the evaporation of billions of dollars.
“He’s just trying to save himself,” she told Insider Thursday. “That his defense if he going to get prosecuted: ‘I know Alameda overleveraged’ — which a crazy f—ing claim — that it the girlfriend’s fault. You can see the seeds of that already.”
Sorokin herself convict in 2019 of scamming banks and hotels out of around $200,000 — a saga that was later adapted into Netflix’s limited series “Inventing Anna.” Under the fake name “Anna Delvey,” she presented herself as a wealthy heiress and sought to obtain funds to build a project called the Anna Delvey Foundation.
Anna Sorokin: Sam Bankman-Fried media apology tour is scam
His crypto exchange firm FTX collapsed in November amid reports that it appeared to commingle funds with Alameda Research, a separate investing company he owned and which run by Caroline Ellison, who he said also a former romantic partner. Multiple federal agencies are reviewing his actions, which could lead to civil enforcement or criminal charges.
Bankman-Fried has since gone on a media apology tour, claiming he believes he could have avoided FTX’s problems had he only focused more on risk management and that he could have saved the exchange from collapse if he had more time to find investors. He has said he was giving media interviews against the advice of his attorneys.
Other FTX executives did not appear to share his optimism. A top lawyer for the company during the collapse said Bankman-Fried’s plan to save. The exchange by shoring up more investments had a “0% likelihood of success,” the New York Times reported. Days later, John Jay Ray III, the corporate turnaround executive. Who took over as FTX’s CEO after Bankman-Fried resigned, was aghast at the state of the company.
“Never in my career have I seen such a complete failure of corporate. Controls and such a complete absence of trustworthy financial information as occurred here.” Ray wrote in the bankruptcy filing for the firm.
Sorokin believes Bankman-Fried’s entreaties to the media are insincere.
“It’s a Ponzi scheme, what he did,” she told Insider.