A Cherry Hill man who befriended Sam Bankman-Fried as a teen at math camp is central to the feds’ investigation of FTX
As a teen, Gary Wang met Sam Bankman-Fried at math camp. The pair would later go on to be ensnared in one of the largest crypto scandals at their company, FTX.
Since FTX filed for bankruptcy in November, the crypto exchange, its cofounder, Sam Bankman-Fried, and other executives have faced continued scrutiny and legal consequences.
Last month, Nishad Singh, FTX’s former director of engineering, was the third exec to plead guilty to criminal charges in federal court. Singh followed Caroline Ellison, the former CEO of Alameda Research — a crypto trading company linked to FTX — who pleaded guilty to multiple federal fraud and conspiracy charges in December.
On the same day, FTX’s former chief technology officer Gary Wang pleaded guilty to wire fraud, conspiracy to commit wire fraud, conspiracy to commit commodities fraud, and conspiracy to commit securities fraud.
Last week, attorneys representing Bankman-Fried in a letter to U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan argued that their client’s trial, set to begin in October, may have to be delayed, claiming that prosecutors had not turned over a “substantial portion” of documents related to information obtained from devices belonging to Ellison and Wang.
The administrators overseeing FTX’s bankruptcy filing also identified $3.2 billion in assets transferred to Bankman-Fried ($2.2 billion), Ellison ($6 million), and Wang ($246 million), among other former top execs, according to new court filings.
Both Ellison and Wang have been cooperating with authorities as they continue to investigate Bankman-Fried and FTX’s and Alameda’s mismanagement of billions of dollars. Seen as one of Bankman-Fried’s closest allies in business, Wang, previously an unknown figure, has become key to the investigations.
“A cooperator like Gary Wang is incredibly valuable to the government,” Mark Kasten, a lawyer at Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney told Bloomberg.
Who is Gary Wang?
When Wang, whose given name is Zixiao, was 8, his family moved from China to Minnesota. In 2008, the family moved again, this time to Cherry Hill, N.J., according to Eastside Online, the student newspaper at Cherry Hill High School East.
While still in Minnesota, Wang spent four years enrolled in the University of Minnesota’s Talented Youth in Mathematics Program in Rochester, laying the groundwork for a future academic career heavily focused on mathematics, Eastside Online reported.
“From a young age, he was very quiet and solely focused on his strongest interest in math and coding,” Wang’s father, Qiang Wang, told the student newspaper, the only publication to have interviewed Wang’s family.
Yearbooks from Cherry Hill High East, where he transferred as a sophomore, show that Wang was a member of the school’s math, chess, and chemistry clubs, from sophomore through senior year. He also competed with the science Olympiad team in his junior and senior years.
Wang first met Bankman-Fried in 2008 when the two attended Canada/USA Mathcamp, a prestigious five-week camp, Bloomberg reported. They both attended the camp again in subsequent years.
At Mount Holyoke in Massachusetts, where the math camp was held in 2010, Wang and Bankman-Fried also met Sam Trabucco, who later would become a co-CEO of Alameda Research after two years at Bala Cynwyd’s Susquehanna International Group. Trabucco has not been charged with any wrongdoing at Alameda.
All three went on to attend the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where Bankman-Fried and Wang pledged Epsilon Theta, a coed fraternity, and were roommates for three years, Coindesk reported
FTX’s rise and fall
After graduating with degrees in mathematics and computer science, Wang landed at Google as a software engineer before reconnecting with Bankman-Fried. The pair founded FTX in May 2019 with Wang serving as the chief technology officer.
FTX saw about $9.4 billion worth of crypto trades every day, making it one of the most popular exchanges for trading cryptocurrencies, such as bitcoin. The company went through multiple funding rounds, attracting investors such as Sequoia Capital and the SoftBank Vision Fund, and was valued at around $32 billion in September 2022.
Wang was largely responsible for writing FTX’s code and updating it to accommodate increased bandwidth.
“Regarding FTX, he wasn’t interested in the communication or management parts of the company. He was only interested in his part of work, [which was] coding,” Wang’s mother, Bing Xiao, told Eastside Online.
FTX’s success proved lucrative for Bankman-Fried and his executives. In April 2022, Wang was named the richest person in the world under 30 by Forbes, which estimated his net worth at $5.9 billion. That number dropped dramatically when FTX filed for bankruptcy in November. Most of his wealth was tied to his 16% stake in FTX and the platform’s own cryptocurrency, or token, FTT, Forbes noted.
By November, the company, based in the Bahamas, was in a period of turmoil and was seeking funding after it said it received an influx of withdrawal requests it could not fulfill. After filing for bankruptcy protection, FTX and Bankman-Fried became the target of investigations by the Department of Justice, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the FBI, and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC).
“Ms. Ellison and Mr. Wang played an active role in a scheme to misuse FTX customer assets to prop up Alameda and to post collateral for margin trading,” SEC Chair Gary Gensler said in a statement. “When FTT and the rest of the house of cards collapsed, Mr. Bankman-Fried, Ms. Ellison, and Mr. Wang left investors holding the bag.”
Gary Wang’s work at FTX caught him in the cross fire of multiple investigations:
The Department of Justice charged Wang with one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud; one count of wire fraud; one count of conspiracy to commit commodities fraud; and one count of conspiracy to commit securities fraud. Wang pleaded guilty to all charges brought by the U.S. attorney’s office in the Southern District of New York. He entered into a plea agreement that could see a maximum sentence of 50 years in prison.
The SEC filed civil charges against Wang. The complaint alleges multiple violations of securities and exchange laws, which could be punishable by various injunctions or bans on Wang’s future business transactions. They include permanent trading and registration bans; payment of restitution or other monetary penalties; and a bar from being named an officer and director of a company for a time decided on by the court.
The CFTC is seeking “restitution, disgorgement, civil monetary penalties, permanent trading and registration bans, and a permanent injunction against further violations of the Commodity Exchange Act (CEA) and CFTC regulations, as charged.”
“It’s really wild to find out your classmate was worth several billion dollars and is now facing years in prison,” Tommy Tang, who was the copresident of the Cherry Hill High East math club with Wang, told Bloomberg.