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SBF Used Client Funds to Purchase $228 Million in Real Estate in the Bahamas

Notre Dame, an expert witness in the SBF trial, and an accounting professor at the university, testified on Wednesday, presenting the results of a comprehensive analysis of thousands of pages of bank statements and internal data from FTX. The results showed that as of June 2022, SBF had spent $228 million of client funds on real estate in the Bahamas, including purchasing properties worth $16.4 million for his parents. $195.2 million flowed to so-called "insiders," executives at FTX and Alameda.

Previously, Peter Easton, an accounting professor at Notre Dame, testified on Wednesday that FTX client deposits were reinvested in business and real estate and used for political and charitable donations.

It is reported that Easton was hired by the US Department of Justice to track billions of dollars of funds from Alameda and FTX. Easton said that around March 2021, the total amount of client deposits was lower than FTX's bank balance, meaning that client funds had already lost support at that time. By June 2022, when FTX deposits reached their peak, the exchange had only about $2 billion on hand to support $11.3 billion in client deposits, resulting in a funding gap of $9 billion.

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