Investor, “Shark Tank” decide and CNBC contributor Kevin O’Leary stated Thursday he is misplaced all the $15 million FTX paid him to behave as a spokesman for the now-collapsed crypto trade that some have referred to as fraudulent.
O’Leary and different celebrities, akin to Tom Brady and Larry David, have been sued by FTX traders who say the trade’s ambassadors ought to have completed extra due diligence and exercised a higher degree of care earlier than selling the crypto empire.
The Canadian investor was grilled by CNBC’s “Squawk Field” hosts over his failure to correctly assess the dangers related to investing and selling FTX. O’Leary stated that he fell prey to “groupthink,” and that none of his funding companions had misplaced cash.
“Whole deal was slightly below $15 million, all in,” O’Leary stated. “I put about $9.7 million into crypto. I feel that is what I misplaced. I do not know. It is all at zero.”
He additionally stated he had greater than $1 million of FTX fairness, now rendered nugatory by the chapter safety course of. The stability of somewhat over $4 million was purportedly eaten up by taxation and agent charges, in response to O’Leary.
O’Leary promoted FTX aggressively on Twitter and on-line, touting his shut reference to disgraced founder Sam Bankman-Fried, who’s dealing with a number of investigations.
When O’Leary first started to advertise FTX, he stated it was FTX’s compliance methods that drew him to spend money on the crypto trade.
“Lastly solved my compliance issues with #cryptocurrencies,” O’Leary wrote on LinkedIn and in a since-deleted August 2021 tweet.
Finally, Delaware chapter safety filings by new FTX CEO John Ray III would time period FTX’s danger, audit and compliance procedures “an entire failure of company controls.”
“It was not a superb funding,” O’Leary stated Thursday.
Disclosure: CNBC owns the unique off-network cable rights to “Shark Tank.”
