FTX Crypto Crash: Ultimate Bet Scandal Lawyer Daniel Friedberg Involved

Daniel Friedberg, a lawyer involved in the Ultimate Bet scandal and subsequent cover-up, is also linked to the FTX crypto crash. FTX, once the second-biggest cryptocurrency exchange in the world, halted withdrawals as investors pulled $6billion in deposits. This ‘run on the bank’ followed rumours and allegations that the Bahamas-based company was basically insolvent, its FTT currency tanking by up to 80% in one day.

FTX’s former general counsel and current chief compliance officer is Daniel Friedberg. He was involved in a secretly-recorded meeting in which Ultimate Bet boss Russ Hamilton admitted to cheating and stealing players’ money. Some $50million was robbed from other players in the super-user scandal, with Hamilton having “God-mode” access to everyone’s hole cards. The audio recording, which surfaced in 2013 – five years after the meeting – reveals Friedberg actively conspiring to lie about what had actually happened.

In the recording, Hamilton is heard telling Friedberg: “I did take this money and I’m not trying to make it right, Dan, so we gotta get that out of the way right away, real quick.” Friedberg advised Hamilton to claim he was also a victim of the cheating – “otherwise it [the concocted cover-up tale] is not going to fly” – and to put out a story that “a former consultant to the company, uh, took advantage of a server flaw by hacking into the client.” The people at the meeting – Hamilton, Friedberg, Ultimate Bet founder and CEO Greg Pierson, and Friedberg’s fellow UB attorney Sanford Millar – also discussed how much it was going to cost them to repay players and regulatory fines. “If we could get it down to five, I’d be happy,” says Friedberg, advising his fellow cover-up members that it was a realistic figure “depending how creative we get.”