🧵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).
🧵9/Ω
$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.
🧵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.
🧵35/Ω
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.
and if you think i'm exaggerating you haven't been paying attention. the taxpayer bailout of the crypto industry is already well underway. wpr.org/news/wisconsin…
they've already drafted the federal legislation to pump most of a trillion dollars into bitcoin under the delusional fairy tale of "paying down the national debt" (lol) lummis.senate.gov/press-releases…
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Thread for those who don't have the intestinal fortitude to sit through the Elmo / Rogan interview.
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Both these guys seem to regard the FBI asking (not forcing) "old Twitter" to take down some tweets as a crime against humanity roughly on the scale of the Stalin's gulags.
Rogan: "We were headed down a path of censorship and of control of narratives that is UNPRECEDENTED."
🧵3/Ω
The comparison to Stalin is not my hyperbole. Later in the interview Elmo will compare NY DA Alvin Bragg to Lavrenti Beria, the head of Stalin's secret police and one of history's greatest monsters.
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.
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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: