FTX bankruptcy financial advisors are dispatching customer transaction information to the FBI

Financial advisors for the bankrupt crypto exchange FTX have been delivering customer transaction data over the past few months to the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation, according to recent court filings.

Alvarez & Marsal North America, serving as financial advisors to FTX, disclosed in monthly fee statements over the past few weeks that they received subpoena-related requests from multiple FBI offices throughout the country to do certain tasks such as analyzing data, transactions and extracting certain information as well. Bloomberg News first reported on the filings. 

One task, for example, was to "investigate all transactions and customer accounts related to specific customer accounts regarding a new FBI Philadelphia subpoena request," according to court filings. 

Other FBI offices from Oakland, Minneapolis and Portland also filed requests. Another court filing from earlier this week showed FBI outreach to victims of the FTX collapse. 

Other crypto exchanges have also received requests from law enforcement looking for customer account information. From October 2021 through September 2022, Coinbase said it received 12,320 information requests from law enforcement around the world, a 66% increase over the previous year's report. 

"Where necessary, we will seek to narrow requests that are overly broad or vague to provide a more appropriately tailored response, and in some cases we object to producing any information at all (such as if the request is legally insufficient). We also aim to provide anonymized or aggregated data that aids law enforcement and government agencies with their work, where it is possible to do so, instead of providing individual customer information," Coinbase Chief Legal Officer Paul Grewal said in the 2022 blog post. 

FTX's fall

FTX was one of the biggest crypto exchanges before filing for bankruptcy almost exactly a year ago. Former CEO Sam Bankman-Fried was arrested in the Bahamas after customers lost billions. 

Bankman-Fried was convicted on Thursday on two substantive crimes, wire fraud on the lenders and customers of FTX and five conspiracy crimes. FTX is still undergoing bankruptcy proceedings and said last week that it was considering multiple proposals, including launching an exchange.