Sam Bankman-Freed has reached a settlement agreement with a group of FTX customers who agreed to drop a class action lawsuit against him in exchange for help in going after the failed exchange's celebrity promoters.
The agreement, filed in a Miami court on Friday, has yet to be approved by a judge. If approved, the settlement would free Bankman Freed from any current or future civil liability related to FTX's collapse.
Bankman Freed's agreement states that he will provide information, including both testimony and documents in his possession, to plaintiffs' lawyers to “help victims recover” and assist in litigation efforts against the numerous celebrity promoters and venture capital firms that backed FTX. He also agreed to provide financial information and documents to the lawyers, including the total value of his remaining personal assets and the amount his firm invested in AI startup Anthropic in 2021.
Bankman Freed's former friends, colleagues and co-defendants Caroline Ellison, Nishad Singh and Gary Wang, as well as FTX attorney Dan Friedberg, have also reached similar settlement agreements with the plaintiffs' attorneys.
Several smaller celebrity promoters, including financial YouTuber Andrej Zik, Graham Stephen, Jaspreet Singh, Tom Nash, Brian Jung and Jeremy Lefebvre, also settled and set up a joint fund of $1.4 million to fund litigation, according to court documents.
Jacksonville Jaguars quarterback Trevor Lawrence, who received $500,000 in advertising fees for FTX subsidiary Blockfolio in 2022, also settled with plaintiffs last year.
But most of FTX's big-name promoters, including athletes Tom Brady, Stephen Curry, Shaquille O'Neal, Naomi Osaka, Shohei Ohtani and supermodel Gisele Bundchen, are engaged in litigation, as are more than a dozen domestic and international venture capital firms.
