🧵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
🧵4/Ω
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?
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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.
🧵16/Ω
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/…
🧵20/Ω
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
🧵24/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.
🧵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.
🧵29/Ω
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).
🧵31/Ω
"@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."
🧵32/Ω
😱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.
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There's what looks like a 2015 pitch sheet (?) from #BlockchainCapital, co-founded by epstein's pal #BrockPierce who would go on to help launch Tether (a nation state sized money laundering machine) and EOS (1 of the biggest scams in history, ~$4bn) journaliststudio.google.com/pinpoint/docum…
🧵9/Ω
Disgraced former head of the MIT Media Lab Joi Ito seen here telling Epstein that crypto is "like the internet" but the core team is in need of a bailout, which he used "gift funds" to "win this round".
Jeffrey Epstein touched cryptocurrency in a lot of inappropriate places. #epsteinfiles #epstein #JeffreyEpstein
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Here's the actual link. Also want to give a huge shout out to @NFTEthics whose research I heavily relied on for the article. cryptadamus.substack.com/p/crypto-epste…
@NFTethics 🧵3/Ω
The man, the myth, the legend: Howard "Nutlick" Lutnick.
🧵1/Ω
i found a pretty fascinating trove of documents that detail one man's long and arduous 𝘬𝘢𝘮𝘱𝘧 to force #Tether to seize ~$3 million USDT that he lost to an address poisoning scam a few years back.
🧵2/Ω
Asif Ayub Patel was innocently attempting to purchase $3 million worth of gold bars from Northern Lights, a precious metals dealer based in Hong Kong that prefers to be paid in Tether, as any freedom loving Dubai resident is wont to do.
TTNRRr9jJ4sKAYExY9UryfxApFXJH2t2SJ
🧵3/Ω
Unfortunately he was careless & got pwned by an address poisoning attack: scammer sends you some crypto from an address that starts/ends w/the same characters as the address you are trying to transact with and hopes you copy/paste from recent txns w/out checking.
🧵1/Ω
Since #Israel attacked #Iran Tether has frozen 112 addresses on Tron and Ethereum.
- Collectively those wallets received ~$700 million USDT before being frozen
- The top 40 of those wallets are *all* on Justin Sun's Tron blockchain
Iranian exchanges mostly use Tron USDT.
🧵2/Ω
Dune dashboard with all the historical Tether blacklist data for those two blockchains can be found here: dune.com/queries/5342352
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#Nobitex, the largest crypto exchange in Iran (which is basically a Binance feeder fund, but I digress), openly advises its users on how to avoid sanctions via Tether USDT even though that is a blatant violation of all kinds of laws.
🧿3/Ω
it really looks like a few days before the $TRUMP launch someone borrowed all $ETH from #WorldLibertyFi treasury, sent it to a bunch of different Coinbase accounts (sus?), and then it came back from #CowSwap trades post-TrumpCoin w/e.