Former FTX Head of Engineering Nishad Singh said he “learned of a hole” in FTX’s finances in September 2022, just two months before the exchange filed for bankruptcy. Though he noticed around $8 billion missing from the Sam Bankman-Fried run company, he nevertheless “greenlit” transactions, which he “implicitly” knew had to have come from user deposits, he told a court Monday.
The hole was “enormous,” Singh said, adding that he learned in conversations with Bankman-Fried that the funds were used by Alameda Research for a variety of venture investments, political donations, real estate buys and other expenditures.
Singh kicked off the third week of Bankman-Fried’s criminal trial as a key witness in the government’s case that Bankman-Fried committed an array of fraud and conspiracy charges. Like fellow former executives Caroline Ellison and Gary Wang, who testified across the last two weeks, he pleaded guilty to charges tied to the exchange’s operation and collapse.
Singh’s testimony early on Monday follows Tareq Morad, a former FTX customer who said he learned about FTX from headlines and his work lobbying Congress. He sent funds to North Dimension via wire transfer to fund his FTX account. He ultimately lost between $250,000 and $280,000 worth of deposits, he said.
This story is developing and will be updated.Read all of CoinDesk’s coverage here.
