🧵1/Ω A few things about @crossriverbank, a tiny #a16z funded lender that originated more #PPP loans for "small businesses" than anyone besides Chase, BofA, and Wells Fargo, mostly for people who were not their customers.
🧵2/Ω They paid @McKinsey a bunch of money to tell the world that "while most banks originated PPP loans to their own customers, Cross River leads in originations to new customers" mckinsey.com/industries/fin…
🧵3/Ω Unlike other banks that blew up on "fund banking" recently (*cough* $SBNY $SIVB *cough*) @crossriverbank does their "fund banking" differently:
They package all the loans and sell them to weird "fintech" companies like @Upstart. @mikulaja
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100,000 #PPP / covid relief loans, mostly to new customers, processed by a super tiny bank @crossriverbank
Basically claiming to have the most incredibly skilled and fastest fraud prevention team at any bank on the planet by orders of magnitude 🚩 nytimes.com/2020/06/23/bus…
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Much like criminal mastermind Alan Lane (CEO of $SI) and noted theologian #ScottShay (president of $SBNY), the CEO is deeply religious (and wants you to know it).
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$SRAX also was just apparently de-listed from the @Nasdaq for failure to comply with filing requirements last week. 🚩 sec.gov/ix?doc=/Archiv…
🧵10/Ω @crossriverbank is also now the main banking partner for @circle of recently de-pegged stablecoin $USDC fame now that their other banks have all blown up.
🧵12/Ω
So the story of @crossriverbank has a lot of drama. It's got #BrockPierce for the pedo connection, #Tether for some Putin, what appears to be massive #PPP / covid relief fraud for the $ part...
Why not sprinkle in a little Ukraine for good measure?
🧵14/Ω
If you wonder why a tiny bank like @crossriverbank might shovel fraudulent #PPP / covid relief loans out, maybe it's because they collected ~$233 million in fees according to NYT
ps the fact that NYT took this at face value is one of many reasons it's a national disgrace.
🧵15/Ω #CrossRiverBank has biz lines other than crypto. e.g. in 2022 they loaned $105mm to a luxury condo by shady developers #Bushburg and #Moinian deep in the lowest income neighborhood in all of NYC.
"deal makes no sense" - NY RE reporters.
if economy turns loan will fail.
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CrossRiver is also one of the only banks besides @silvergatebank / $SI (R.I.P.) to make loans and take crypto as collateral.
They also marketed $WAVES / $USDN, a now collapsed fraud, to customers.
🧵17/Ω @AmerBanker: A bank originating #PPP loan fraud, doing fraudulent round robin lending with $UPST, banking crypto, and lending out actual $ for crypto collateral is "best place to work" 5 yrs in a row.
Remind you of an "innovative" energy company?
"Let us build."
🧵18/Ω
So what does the @coinbase / Cross River relationship look like? Well.
Apparently the company that shoveled out fraudulent #PPP loans is in the "compliance" business.
Does @crossriverbank still do compliance for $COIN? Because if so lol.
🧵19/Ω
By number of #PPP loans @crossriverbank was #4 in the country. But by dollar figure?
🥈 2nd 🥈
As an aside this brochure seems to be marketed at "woke" which is interesting bc their Haredi employees are among the least "woke" people on the planet crossriver.com/sites/default/…
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Apparently @KabbageInc (R.I.P.) did some actual customer facing work w/r/t the enormous number of fraudulent loan applications @crossriverbank processed.
#Kabbage got bought by #AmEx but is now under federal investigation & bankrupt
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Perhaps now is a good time to mention that a recent study found that 5-14% of all emergency covid #PPP relief funds ended up being "invested" in crypto, particularly among the less educated.
🧵25/Ω
Perhaps now is a good time to mention that a recent study found that 5-14% of all emergency covid #PPP relief funds ended up being "invested" in crypto, particularly among the less educated.
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tfw you wasted time researching & screenshooting examples that @crossriverbank's #PPP covid lending was sus af to tweet when you could have just checked the nj biz news and found out #CrossRiverBank is currently under investigation for money crimes. njbiz.com/cross-river-ba…
@crossriverbank 🧵30/Ω
So @coinbase / @circle / $USDC's bank is under investigation for money crimes (probably because it committed money crimes).
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"@crossriverbank's less hands-on approach ... may have led it to approve riskier loans... U. of Texas graph shows ~20%¹ of CRB's loans had at least 1 suspicious indicator."
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😱WOW😱 missed this part about @crossriverbank: The US Government owes Cross River $300 million (⁉️) in loan forgiveness... that it's not willing to forgive.
No wonder so many CRB #PPP loans' status is "Not Disclosed" instead of "forgiven": they have a $300m hole.
🧵33/Ω
I did a whole other thread about the Congressional report on how fintechs (including @crossriverbank) had facilitated fraudulent #PPP / covid relief loans and are now under investigation.
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One thing that's weird here is that some of these job listings come up as being for something called #CrossTheRiver but logo and address are #CrossRiverBank.
i find it at least curious that this announcement of such a massive capital raise came just a few days after we got confirmation that the Treasury Dept is considering freezing Tether's assets and the DOJ is investigating them...
1/ anyone heard of #ChipperCash, an #FTX funded african fintech that had at one point almost $700 million deposited at Silicon Valley Bank? the funds were split up across like 10 accounts so the name didn't come up when $SVB's top depositors were a hot topic...
2/ Funds were in accounts labeled as "Deciens Chipper Cash SPV" 1-N. based on the total amount roughly matching the below tweet it seems like those funds somehow came from #Nigeria's government?
3/ Which in turn makes me wonder if this is stolen Nigerian oil money being laundered through SVB @mikulaja have you heard of this apparently kind of large fintech company?
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A thread about the recent connection of what WSJ calls “the shadow dollar that’s fueling the financial underworld” and the Trump campaign (basically a 🧵 version of my pinned tweet).
Ω👇Ω
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Some background: there’s a NYC based financial firm called Cantor Fitzgerald whose CEO is a man named Howard Lutnick. Lutnick became somewhat infamous in the aftermath of 9/11 for cutting off payments to the many Cantor employees who died in the World Trade Center.
🧵3/Ω
Lutnick has two roles that matter for the purposes of this 🧵. The first is he was recently made the co-chair of the Trump transition team, meaning if Trump wins Lutnick will be choosing who will run things like the Dept. of Justice, Defense, etc. thehill.com/homenews/campa…
🧵2/Ω
I have videos of these screenshots but the frame rate is broken and i'm too lazy to correct it right now, but Uzbekistan's #Agrobank hired Brock Pierce's favorite lobbyist and went to meet Ted Cruz and went to the White House:
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maybe nothing but interesting the total value of Tether's repo assets for 2023-Q4 is only 2% less than the collateralized assets listed on #CantorFitzgerald's 2023 filing
2/ maybe more likely to be nothing but Tether's infamous "Secured Loans" number is only 3% less than the "Securities purchased under agreements to resell" on the #CantorFitzgerald balance sheet
🧵1/Ω
Just read #Chainalysis "2024 Crypto Crime Mid-Year Report". Obvs they have a habit of minimizing crypto crime stats but reading closely I realized this is kinda nuts. So nuts I that we need new rhyme akin to "pump & dump" vein. I give you:
"Minimize & Legitimize"
Ω👇Ω
🧵2/Ω
The report has two parts. I focused on the 2nd half because it makes a big deal about CSAM. Surprisingly to me it seemed like Chainalysis was for once maybe not downplaying something really bad...
🧵3/Ω
Below is the tweet I dashed off as did a quick scan. CSAM is bad. If CSAM number go up = really bad. Looked like Chainalysis was admitting bad number go up!
Which, speaking as someone who's checked their work on terrorism financing, was surprising.