[Question] The US Attorney for the SDNY asked that FTX money be returned to victims. What are the moral and legal consequences to EA?

In a December 13, 2022 press conference announcing the indictment of Sam Bankman-Fried, Damian Williams, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, said the following:

To any person, entity or political campaign that has received stolen customer money, we ask that you work with us to return that money to the innocent victims.

In the same press conference, he alleges that FTX has been stealing customer money since 2019:

First, we charge that from 2019 until earlier this year, Bankman-Fried and his co-conspirators stole billions of dollars from FTX customers.

He also alleged the following about SBF’s political contributions:

Those contributions were disguised to look like they were coming from wealthy co-conspirators, when in fact, the contributions were funded by Alameda Research with stolen customer money.

This might be relevant to EA orgs, since a lot of SBF’s political contributions seem to have been made around the same time as his EA donations (i.e. this year), and so likely came from the same source.

I made a comment pointing out some of this information yesterday, but so far that this is getting less attention than I expected given the seriousness of the matter, hence this top-level post.

What are the moral and legal consequences of the information in the indictment, and of Williams’s request, to EA orgs and individuals that have received money from FTX?

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