Something’s Off About Shaq’s FTX Settlement… And SBF’s New Allegations Only Add to the Mystery

I can’t believe it’s been almost three years since FTX collapsed… and the nerdy founder who once got hyped as the next Warren Buffett had his entire empire ripped apart after Binance’s Changpeng Zhao pretty much tweeted, “Yeah, this smells like a Ponzi,” and that’s all it took to light the fuse on the biggest financial implosion since Enron tried to convince everyone they were just a humble utility company.

Turns out, Sam Bankman-Fried (our lovable, cargo-short-wearing nerd) wasn’t running a crypto exchange. He was running a glorified three-card monte table with a Bahamas beachfront view. And don’t tell me SBF and his band of pajama pirates were robbing Peter to pay Paul… they were robbing Paul, maxing out Peter’s AmEx, and Venmo’ing the rest to Caroline Ellison so she could go lose it all on 100x leverage at Alameda Research.

And look, we all know SBF is now in prison, allegedly learning about personal responsibility and maybe how not to destroy billions in customer funds. But what still gets my blood pressure spiking like Bitcoin on a Saylor tweet is how all the celebrity endorsers just... vanished.

Tom Brady and Steph Curry? Silent enough to make you wonder if they ever really were in that commercial. And those YouTube finance influencers… the ones who were shilling FTX between videos titled “How I Made $100,000 in Passive Income While Sleeping”? They’ve done nothing but sort of apologize. Graham Stephan, Meet Kevin, and the rest of the thumbnail-face gang were practically begging viewers to "take advantage of this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity"... and when it all blew up, they did what every good internet guru does when their affiliate deal turns toxic: hit delete, deny, and dip.

All these folks got paid fat stacks to lend credibility to a company that had less real value than a Chuck E. Cheese token, and when it imploded… moved on to the next sponsorship opportunity. And now we’re supposed to clap because Shaq wrote a check? Please. The man makes $15 million a year eating Papa John’s on TV with Charles Barkley. His $1.8 million settlement is like you or me paying off a parking ticket worth $5. He's not "making it right"... he's just making it go away.

To be fair, Shaq is the only FTX shill who’s even done that much. He cut a deal to settle the lawsuit over his endorsement… without admitting guilt, of course (because heaven forbid anyone admit anything these days). That payout covers legal fees, admin costs, and whatever scraps are left for the investors who got financially pantsed by this whole thing. Also, he’s barred from clawing the money back from the FTX estate… which is like being banned from withdrawing cash from an empty ATM.

And while Shaq scribbles a check and gets back to selling printer ink and car insurance, SBF is doing what all great white-collar criminals eventually do: trying to rebrand himself. In a 45-minute interview from prison, Sam claimed (get this) that he’s innocent. That FTX never went bankrupt. That it was all just a little liquidity issue. If the lawyers hadn’t stepped in, he says, everyone would’ve been paid back. Totally.

He blamed the lawyers, the bankruptcy trustee, the Biden administration, the judge, probably RFK. And he’s now saying he’s been a Republican since 2022 and shares a common enemy with Trump in Judge Kaplan. (This, of course, after being Biden’s second-largest donor in 2020.)

Meanwhile, over 400,000 FTX users are still in crypto purgatory. Some got partial refunds (about $5 billion has been paid out so far) but $2.25 billion in claims are still tangled up in a bureaucratic mess that makes the DMV look like a drive-thru. Users have reported sending in documents for months, only to get ghosted by the claims team.

Need your money back? Better be ready to upload your passport, utility bill, tax returns, and a blood sample… just to maybe get a few hundred bucks from an account you thought was “safe.” One guy with a $4,000 claim said the process made him feel like he was applying for clearance to Area 51. Another said it was easier adopting a child than getting through FTX’s KYC process. So no, Shaq’s check doesn’t fix this. It doesn’t even scratch the surface. It’s theater. It’s cleanup on aisle fraud.

At the time of publishing this article, Stocks.News doesn’t hold positions in companies mentioned in the article.