FTX bankruptcy advisors hand over customer trading data to FBI: Court docs

In billing records filed back in September, the Philadelphia FBI sent over a Grand Jury subpoena looking to “investigate activity related to specific individuals”

by Katherine Ross /

November 3, 2023 12:48 pm

Dzelat/Shutterstock modified by Blockworks

FTX bankruptcy consultants Alvarez & Marsal have been handing over information on customer transactions and other data to various FBI branches, according to billing documents filed by the consultants.

The documents fail to clearly explain what information is given outside of descriptions such as “Analyze transactions specific to a Philadelphia FBI request for specific customers.”

Some of the other requests included “Extract[ing] transaction and customer information related to specific transaction hashes” from an FBI Portland subpoena.

In billing records filed back in September, the Philadelphia FBI sent over a Grand Jury subpoena looking to “investigate activity related to specific individuals.”

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Another billing request from Oct. 31 only names two requests from FBI offices. One is related to an FBI Oakland subpoena seeking information on transactional data, and the other is from the Philadelphia FBI asking for “transactional data from AWS related to specific deceive IDs.”

The reason for the probes is also unclear. Bloomberg first reported the news.

Outside of the FBI requests, the bankrupt crypto exchange has worked to keep its customer names from becoming public.

Back in June, it received court permission to remove customer names from filings after arguing that names being made public could end with former customers being put at risk of scams and identity theft. The June ruling from US bankruptcy Judge John Dorsey came after he signed off on keeping the names secret for three months.

However, customer data being handed over to federal officials is not uncommon.

Back in May, a court ruled that the Internal Revenue Service can access Coinbase’s user trading data.

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