A parade of media and tech companies are apparently owed money by FTX along with hundreds of other creditors, according to an extensive list that runs from banks, insurers, hedge funds, airlines and hotels to universities, federal agencies and every state in the nation from Alabama to Wyoming.
Creditors run 116 pages of small print in a bankruptcy filing in Delaware by the collapsed cryptocurrency exchange.
Media and entertainment names include Netflix, Fox, CAA Sports, WME Entertainment, Turner, Bleacher Report, Bloomberg, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Sirius XM and the Coachella Music Festival. Other creditors run the gamut from Amazon to Apple, Amtrak and AT&T, Comcast to Conde Nast, Google to Goldman Sachs to Gamestop, Meta to Marriott to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to Mercedes Benz to the Miami Heat Charitable Foundation. Twitter is there, Time Magazine and Thompson Reuters. There’s Peloton, The Container Store, the Nasdaq, U.S. Department of Labor, the DOJ. Verizon and Virgin Atlantic. WeWork. League of Legends Championship Series. Reddit, The Real Deal.
The list, called a “credit matrix” is alphabetical with no dollar figures or explanation of what’s owed, just names and mailing addresses. It’s required in bankruptcies. Entities listed haven’t necessarily filed claims against FTX, the once hot Bahamas-based cryptocurrency exchange founded and run by Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) that collapsed in spectacular fashion and filed for Chapter 11 in November. It is said to owe some $3 billion to a million creditors. The names of individual investors have mostly been redacted.
Separately, Bankman-Fried was indicted for fraud last month and is under house arrest at his parent’s home in California. He pleaded not guilty to eight criminal counts and a trial is set for October in the Southern District of New York.
Prosecutors say he stole FTX customer funds to cover losses at his hedge fund, called Alameda Research, and to fund luxury purchases and donations to political campaigns. Two of his former executives at FTX/Alameda have pleaded guilty to fraud and conspiracy and are cooperating with prosecutors.
Larry David and sports stars Tom Brady, Shaquille O’Neal, Stephen Curry, Naomi Osaka, and others had all promoted FTX. They are named as defendants in a class action lawsuit against the firm filed in the Southern District of Florida.
This has in fact become a Hollywood story. Marvel directors Joe and Anthony Russo have teamed up with Hunters creator David Weil on a series about the collapsed bitcoin business and its embattled Bankman-Fried for Amazon. And Apple was eyeing the rights to Michael Lewis’ upcoming book on the topic after the Moneyball author spent six months with SBF.
