What's more, those fraudsters have substantial monetary ties to Democrats, which should surprise no one.
The most recent example involves the "FTX crypto slush fund run by now-disgraced Sam Bankman-Fried," Natural News founder and editor Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, reported earlier this week.
Bankman-Fried "donated nearly $40 million to political candidates in the 2022 mid-term elections. Only $235,200 went to Republicans, with the rest going to Democrats. FTX, in other words, was a Democrat slush fund money laundering operation that helped Democrats win mid-term elections (on top of their obvious cheating, ballot stuffing and ballot harvesting operations)," he added.
So -- how did this guy become such a wealthy, powerful figure in our political world so quickly? Easy -- he was assisted by online financial influencers, all of whom raked in their own small fortunes in the process by recommending their followers obtain their cryptocurrency through the FTX exchange, according to this video.
"These people had a responsibility to their fans, and they blew it," said the Coffeezilla podcast in criticizing the influencers for leading their followers astray.
As for the political connection, the Daily Caller reports:
Cryptocurrency CEO and Democratic donor Sam Bankman-Fried funded the campaigns of key lawmakers overseeing the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), the agency tasked with regulating the crypto industry, as he was lobbying the CFTC for greater oversight over the digital asset marketplace.
Bankman-Fried donated to the chair and ranking member of the Senate Agriculture Committee, the committee that has jurisdiction over the CFTC, as well as numerous other members of Congress involved in CFTC oversight.
The FTX CEO also spent hundreds of thousands of dollars lobbying lawmakers and the CFTC on legislation that would expand the scope of the agency’s role in regulating the crypto industry.
"Through FTX, Sam Bankman-Fried was the second largest donor to Democrat candidates this year, only behind George Soros in terms of total dollars donated," Adams noted further in a column at NewsTarget.com. "FTX was the brainchild of not just Sam Bankman-Fried, but his circle of close associates, all of whom have ties to East Coast academia and all the deep state connections that go along with that."
But now that his company is hitting rock bottom -- he is filing for bankruptcy -- the rats are abandoning ship, as CNBC reported Monday:
Former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried and his allies are losing advocates in Washington, as the company hits rock bottom.
Lobbyists who worked for FTX and Guarding Against Pandemics, a nonprofit partially funded by Bankman-Fried and run by his brother, Gabe Bankman-Fried, told CNBC that they have severed ties with the cryptocurrency exchange after its collapse.
Also, according to the outlet, some of the same Democratic recipients of Bankman-Fried's hundreds of millions in donations are bailing, too:
FTX’s stunning downfall has prompted Washington lawmakers, including the Biden White House, to more closely scrutinize the company and the industry at large. The moves by some in Washington to distance themselves from FTX followed a broader push by the company and key executives to ingratiate themselves with policymakers.
Others have bailed on the company as well.
“Our relationship with FTX was terminated early last week and we will not be representing FTX in any capacity moving forward,” Conaway Graves Group, a lobbying shop run by ex-GOP Rep. Mike Conaway of Texas and his former chief of staff Scott Graves, noted in an email to the outlet.
The latest crypto-crash was felt around the industry and on Wall Street.
"Bitcoin held around the $16,000 level as investors dissect the fallout of crypto trading firm FTX," Fox Business Network noted Monday.
Sources include: