Posted on 11/24/2022 6:21:19 AM PST by Oldeconomybuyer
* Farmington State Bank had 3 staff and was the 26th-smallest bank in America out of a total 4,800.
* Then FTX bought an $11.5 million stake in the bank, it has emerged during FTX's bankruptcy case.
* That stake was more than twice the bank's previous net worth.
The town of Farmington has just 146 residents, and is so small that Google Street View doesn't cover the whole town.
For a decade, Farmington's bank held around $10 million in deposits. In the third quarter this year, deposits jumped to $84 million – 85% of which came from just four accounts, according to FDIC data cited by the Times.
Online, the bank now appears as "Moonstone Bank," a name which was trademarked a few days before FTX's investment. Moonstone doesn't mention cryptocurrency, but does say it wants to "support the evolution of next generation finance."
Questions are being asked over how FTX got federal approval to buy its stake in Farmington. Banking veterans told the New York Times that it was hard to believe regulators would have knowingly allowed the crypto firm to do so.
(Excerpt) Read more at msn.com ...
Guess who.....
If Maxine Waters head of the Banking Committee did anything official to help FTX buy the bank
(and took campaign donations in the process)......she left us a nice paper trail.
"Love of MONEY is the Root of All Evil."
[Curiouser and curiouser…]
Indeed.
Mena, Arkansas from “American Made”?
5 or 6 years ago I commented to my husband … am I dreaming or are there as many little banks as there are corner pharmacies? We were just out driving. It made me wonder what was going on then. This is a puzzle piece. So how many FTX like currencies are there?
With only a third of the population working, all of these banks cannot have legit accounts.
Take a drive through any mid size city and see what you think.
Hubby thought it was a weird observation, but these are many, many banks… it doesn’t make sense.
You could see that perhaps an elderly bank owner would jump at an offer of maybe five times book value for his stock. Once the check is in hand, it's off to maybe Cabo San Lucas or a Caribbean cruise. It is likely that FTX used a nominee person or shell corporation to acquire the bank. The state banking department, the FDIC, and/or the Federal Reserve did not drill down on this acquisition.
Small banks were used for money laundering in the past. H.K. Beebe, a Louisiana banker, was notorious for a "rent-a-bank" scheme where he would acquire community banks through nominees and launder drug and gambling money through his banking chain. Congressman Dan Rostenkowski and Hugh Rodham (Hillary Clinton's father) owned a bank in suburban Chicago to launder Mafia money and political payoffs. It is likely FTX was using this rural bank for similar purposes.
Indeed she did she’s not sly nor smart.
What was happening?
Maxine Waters left us a nice paper trail... I’ll bet you’re right on that Liz. She’s careless because democrats have been getting passes for so many years...
How is it nobody’s been arrested yet?
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