Sam Bankman-Fried Claims To Be In Bahamas As Flight Tracker Show His Private Jet Flying To Argentina

Zinger Key Points
  • The FTX crisis is touted a Lehman-like moment for cryptocurrencies.
  • After being ousted from the CEO role, FTX's founder has reportedly left the Bahamas and headed to Argentina.

Sam Bankman-Fried, the disgraced founder of cryptocurrency exchange FTX, has flown to Argentina, according to Flightradar24, a flight tracker that tracks planes all over the world in real-time. The crypto entrepreneur, however, has denied the claim.

What Happened: The most tracked flight early Saturday was that of a private jet, flying Bankman-Fried from the Bahamas, the tracking website said in a tweet. The flight was heading to Argentina, it said, citing tweets.
The private jet was reportedly a Gulfstream G450 with the registration code LV-KEB, which took off from Nassau Lynden Pindling International Airport and flew south for roughly 4,300 miles and landed at San Fernando International Airport, just outside of Buenos Aires.

Meanwhile, the FTX founder has denied the report and told Reuters that he was in the Bahamas.

See also: How To Lose $16 Billion In 3 Days: How Sam Bankman-Fried's Wealth Disappeared

Argentina is a strange destination to take refuge, given the South American country has an extradition treaty with the U.S. that was signed on June 10, 1997.

Why It’s Important: The problems surrounding FTX came to light last week when Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao tweeted the exchange will liquidate its holdings of the FTX Token FTT/USD, the native token of FTX. It later emerged that FTX siphoned away customer funds to its trading firm Alameda Research, which reportedly suffered huge trading losses earlier this year.

Once skeletons began to roll out of the cupboard, the exchange faced a run-in, as customers scrambled to withdraw their funds. The exchange filed for bankruptcy subsequently, and Bankman-Fried was eased out of the CEO role.

Read Next: Crypto and DEFI 101: Benzinga’s intro to Blockchain

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