By Matthew Russell Lee, Patreon Maxwell book
NY Mag Song 1
LITERARY SDNY, Dec 29 – As Kurt Wheelock dug into the Bankman-Fried story he kept coming across the banks. Let others dig into Congress, which SBF had spent the months before his arrest lobbying.
The money was in the banks, the crypto was in the banks, like Moonstone and Silvergate, and the banks were into crypto, like Quontic. This last Kurt had challenged, as if on a whim, seeing a Change in Bank Control Act filing about it. That had been the way Moonstone had been taken, with no one commenting on it. From now on he would.
There was also the Ricchetti connection. Not just SBF's meetings with Steve in the White House, but also Steve's brother Jeff who lobbied with him on or against banking regulation, and Steve's underqualified son J.J. Ricchetti, given a job at the Treasury Department, which through the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency regulated the largest national banks in the country.
Kurt had pilloried Steve Mnuchen and Joseph Otting, at One West then the OCC. Then the OCC had been taken over, however briefly, by an open supporter of crypto. But what about Ricchetti, the Ricchetti, meeting with the now indicted Bankman-Fried? Otting had faked comments in favor of his merger with CIT. SBF and the Ricchettis, and Bruce Reid.
The fraudster had been in the White House, as recently as September 8, 2022. Now the DOJ would be objective? They'd cut the unsecured bail deal, and moved to seal the guilty pleas until after that was done. Should there be a special prosecutor? There should be pursuit, and digging, live, that much was for sure.
Sam Bankman-Fried had gone into the White House through the front door at least four times in 2022. Kurt Wheelock, after an overly expensive coffee accompanied by a fifty cent tangerine at a Pret a Manger nearby, walked the perimeter. Security was high, nearly two years after January 6, 2021.
He went over to the Federal courthouse, where you could still go in albeit through a metal detector. You could even keep your phone, unlike at EDNY and SDNY in New York. The January 6 cases, as they called them, were almost a thousand in number now. During the height of COVID, most presentments and status conferences were by phone and Kurt covered some of them.
There was the old guy from Alabama with Molotov cocktails in glass jars in his van. Locking him up pre-trial made sense. But an off the grid restaurant owner from rural Pennsylvania? She'd been locked up, spouting from the Bible during her bail hearing, while SBF was immediately released, with his lawyers doing all the talking.
And now it appeared to Kurt that SBF could be violating the terms of his pre-trial release, moving crypto out of wallets. They hadn't even barred him from using computers, the way not only short-eyes but plain identity thieves got ordered. There was cartoon comparison, and then the specifics of Bankman-Fried's possible violation of supervised release.
SBF's VOSR, Kurt's dubbed it. It might be time to hit the blockchain. To be continued- song 1 here; more on Patreon here 1 and here 2 and here 3 and here 4 and here 5 and here 6 and here 7
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