Bloomberg reports that the U.S. Department of Justice has opened an investigation into withdrawals from FTX

The U.S. Department of Justice has opened a criminal investigation into withdrawals from the FTX cryptocurrency exchange. Bloomberg reports this citing sources.

According to the agency, the new proceeding was initiated separately from the case against former chief executive Sam Bankman-Fried. In December, the prosecution charged him with eight criminal offenses. The suits were also brought by SEC and CFTC.

On November 11, FTX Group filed for bankruptcy under Chapter 11 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code. The next day, reports emerged of suspicious transactions—an unknown individual transferred more than $400 million from the exchange’s accounts to external addresses.

Later the funds were swapped for Ethereum with a conversion into Wrapped Bitcoin via Ren Protocol and then moved the first cryptocurrency across a cross‑chain bridge to the main network. Subsequently, 255 BTC ended up on the OKX exchange.

Elliptic calculated that the total loss from the attacker’s actions amounted to $477 million. Bloomberg quoted a smaller figure — $372 million. According to the agency, authorities managed to freeze part of the withdrawn funds.

In December, the new FTX CEO John Ray III accused former top executives of storing private keys without encryption. He said that the business processes built by Bankman-Fried’s team put hundreds of millions of dollars at risk of theft or other malicious activity.

Earlier, on December 12, Bahamian authorities arrested the founder of FTX at the request of the U.S. government. The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York released him on bail of $250 million.

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