🧵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…
🧵5/Ω
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.
Ω🧵Ω
Why I Think The Epstein Note Is Probably Real, A Thread
(note for those about to smash reply "lol CIA shill": the word "probably" means "more likely than not". it does not mean "definitely", just that the odds it's real are better than a coinflip)
reasons + odds 👇
🧵1/Ω subjectively, as someone who color-highlighted too many #EpsteinFiles (see 👇), it has the same voice as Epstein. "no fun" followed by "btw I'm the real victim" is more or less exactly what I'd expect the man's final message to the world to be.
🧵2/Ω epstein used the word "fun" as a quasi-synonym for "life".
his friends often asked each other "fun?" as a way of making an inquiry somewhere between "how's life?" and "how many 18 yr old russian models are in the club with you right now?"
🧵1/Ω
#TheCryptocalypseChronicles: The Epstein / Russia / Israel / Crypto Timeline
The recently released #EpsteinFiles make it crystal clear that Epstein's involvement in crypto was much deeper and long lasting than had been previously understood.
(link in bio, RTs 🙏)
🧵2/Ω
If you're just catching up now here's a reminder that one of the things that came out in the recent "#EpsteinFiles" was the fact that bitcoin's core development team was funded from 2015 to [???] almost entirely by Jeffrey Epstein's largesse.
somehow no one has ever posted on twitter about the 5 emails in the #EpsteinFiles that seem to be between epstein and Renata Bolotova, who appears to be a fund manager at New York State Insurance Fund (NYSIF) and who asks Epstein "how are you sneaky?", so I'm posting about it.
...to which epstein replies "sexy" #EpsteinFiles
i have no idea if ms. bolotova is the "kazakh daughter" referred to in the bannon / epstein chats but assuming the picture above is of the right renata bolotova (which i think it is, but not 100% sure) then you have to admit she does look pretty kazakh.
2016: Epstein receives an email from Qatari "Jabor Y." regarding "Sharia guys" and "e-currency" a year and a half after Epstein had provided the funding for the bitcoin core development team at the MIT Digital Currency Initiative. #EpsteinFiles
2/ maybe not actually a Qatari - @matthew_petti at @reason described the "Jabor Y" who was interested in "e-currency" as "an influential man in Qatar".
🧵8/Ω
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".