2 years ago
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Investor, "Shark Tank" justice and CNBC contributor Kevin O'Leary said Thursday he's mislaid each of the $15 cardinal FTX paid him to enactment arsenic a paid spokesperson for the now collapsed crypto speech that some person called fraudulent.
O'Leary and different celebrities, specified arsenic Tom Brady and Larry David, were sued by FTX investors who accidental the exchange's ambassadors should person done much owed diligence and exercised a greater level of attraction earlier promoting the crypto empire.
The Canadian capitalist was grilled by CNBC's "Squawk Box" hosts implicit his nonaccomplishment to decently measure the risks associated with investing and promoting FTX. O'Leary said helium fell prey to "groupthink," and that nary of his concern partners had mislaid money.
"Total woody was conscionable nether $15 million, each in," O'Leary said Thursday greeting connected CNBC's "Squawk Box." "I enactment astir $9.7 cardinal into crypto. I deliberation that's what I lost. I don't know. It's each astatine zero."
O'Leary besides said helium had implicit $1 cardinal of FTX equity, present rendered worthless by the bankruptcy extortion process. The equilibrium of a small implicit $4 cardinal was purportedly eaten up by taxation and cause fees, according to O'Leary.
O'Leary promoted FTX aggressively connected Twitter and online, touting his adjacent transportation with disgraced laminitis Sam Bankman-Fried, who is facing aggregate investigations.
When O'Leary archetypal began to beforehand FTX, helium said it was FTX's compliance systems that drew him to put successful the crypto exchange.
"Finally solved my compliance problems with #cryptocurrencies," O'Leary wrote connected LinkedIn and successful a since-deleted August 2021 tweet.
Eventually, Delaware bankruptcy extortion filings by caller FTX CEO John Ray would word FTX's risk, audit and compliance procedures "a implicit nonaccomplishment of firm controls."
"It was not a bully investment," O'Leary said Thursday.
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