Crypto lawyer James Murphy — better known online as “MetaLawMan”— found himself in an odd situation where he became a creditor of the bankrupt crypto exchange FTX while, at the same time, CEO Sam Bankman-Fried was sharing his posts slamming the exchange.
“Sam Bankman-Fried started reposting my stuff, which is wild because some of my stuff would say like, ‘It appears that FTX was a criminal enterprise from the beginning,’ and he would repost that,” Murphy explains.
Murphy became prominent in crypto for digging into Bankman-Fried’s bail situation after the collapse of FTX in November 2022. Murphy claims “there was no bail bond” and that the math didn’t tally up to the $250 million U.S. prosecutors claimed.
He notes that Bankman-Fried’s parents’ house was worth “$3 or $4 million” and that a couple of co-signers only put up “a few hundred thousand dollars.”
“It was simply a press release to mollify people who would be outraged to see that this white-collar criminal got out on bail and committed one of the largest frauds in the history of our country.”
He wrote a funny article about it, “Bankman-Fried’s Incredible Shrinking ‘$250 Million Bond,’” in December 2022, which got “millions of views.” Out of nowhere, Murphy’s inbox was flooded with requests for TV, radio and podcast appearances.
It was totally unplanned, given that Murphy was trying to ease into retirement at the time.
“This was not actually what I had in mind. I just wanted to be sort of anonymous,” he states.
Because I worked as a securities lawyer for 30 years representing Wall Street firms…
People ask me: “What is likely to happen to Sam Bankman-Fried?”
And I say, I have seen this movie before.
In 2011.
It was called the “MF Global Scandal.”
— MetaLawMan (@MetaLawMan) November 11, 2022
If you’ve been following major crypto publications covering crypto’s various legal headaches in the past year, you’ve probably come across Murphy’s posts…
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