Indian-origin investor livid after losing $2 million in FTX crash

New York, Dec 8

An Indian-origin entrepreneur, who lost $2 million after FTX went kaput last month, is taking legal action against the cryptocurrency exchange's founder, according to a report.

Delhi-born Evan Singh Luthra, 27, first invested in crypto with FTX in 2020. He told Fox Business that a legal team representing him is currently pursuing legal action against FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) for his alleged wire fraud.

"This was a con. Sam Bankman-Fried is a fraud. He committed fraud," Evan Singh Luthra said on Fox's "Mornings with Maria".

"You would not have expected this to turn out the way it has happened. So this was not a risk I was taking when I was investing, this was somebody like Sam Bankman-Fried who committed a crime."

According to a New York Post report, Luthra has built and invested in over 300 companies.

The 27-year-old splashes his cash on yacht parties, luxury properties and even plans to buy his own helicopter just for the thrill of it, the New York Post reported.

FTX filed for bankruptcy last month after its possible merger with leading crypto exchange Binance did not materialise.

SBF, 30, stepped down as FTX chief executive on November 11, and his personal wealth plummeted nearly 94 per cent to $991.5 million in one day.

"He used users' funds to buy property with hundreds of millions of dollars, was flying private jets with users' money, so we can all see that now," said Luthra, who once had more than $12 million in cryptocurrency with FTX.

SBF is facing charges of swindling billions of dollars, and said he is not prepared to testify before a US Congress committee hearing on December 13.

The US House Financial Services Committee is probing the controversial collapse of the crypto exchange that wiped out billions of investors' money.

According to reports, SBF "secretly transferred" $10 billion in FTX client funds to his trading house Alameda.

A recent court filing in the US concerning FTX revealed a crypto empire that was massively mismanaged and possibly fraudulent -- a "complete failure of corporate controls", IANS reported earlier.

The company never had board meetings, and crypto deposited by customers wasn't recorded on the balance sheet, according to the filing.

Corporate funds were used to purchase real estate for personal use, and employees and executives put their names on homes purchased with company funds, according to the filing.

SBF is presently hiding out in his $40 million penthouse at a Bahamas resort, and may face potential extradition over the company's collapse, Fox Business reported.