🧵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.
According to Coinbase there is no way for users to lose their ethereum even if
1. @coinbase gets hacked (user keys gets compromised, etc) 2. there's a bug in the ethereum source code (are lawyers even allowed to comment on this?)
2. "not a common enterprise"
Here #Coinbase admits that there is a gathering together of assets, then makes up some nonsense about how bc you can sell them it doesn't count (nvm that the same is true for stocks), then pretends users won't lose if Coinbase makes a mistake (lies).
🚨Ω🚨 @Coinbase's bank is being sued for predatory lending in a large class action lawsuit filed ~8 weeks ago.
It gets worse though... Because @CrossRiverBank is also starting to have to sue people for loans that are going bad. Financials only allow 1.6% loss. $COIN
Specific allegations about how @CrossRiverBank (@Coinbase's bank! $COIN) broke the law and allegedly defrauded a bunch of people w/predatory "debt relief" lending along with #NewCreditAmerica
👀 lol #ScottShay (AKA #SignatureBank's theologian in residence, also known for his Gordon Gekko routine) got absolutely rekt on the final day of $SBNY trading. which I guess explains that weird bounce from $70 to $100 in the morning
@crossriverbank@coinbase@circle 🧵2/Ω @CrossRiverBank et al. "specialized in dubious loans" and "did not get better over time" as "lenders often doubled or tripled their potential misreporting rates in round 3 compared to rounds 1 and 2."
Sounds like (extremely) willful negligence. @oooitscrime
🧵3/Ω @CrossRiverBank's executives anticipated that people would try to commit #PPP / covid relief fraud early in 2020 (w/in months of American pandemic's start), and yet as noted above 👆 they issued increasing percentages of fraudulent loans (and pocketed increasing fees).
The first time it comes out on the floor of the Congress that we just bailed out a bunch of Chinese tech millionaires with links to the PRC at American citizens' expense...
💥💥~ 1:33:40💥💥
It gets even better when @SecYellen says that there will be no bailouts for anyone who holds more than $250,000 in a rural bank in Oklahoma that collapses [due to the Fed raising rates so quickly].
Trust me when I say you're gonna hear a lot about this for the next forever.
Without even commenting on right vs. wrong, I can just tell you this is the 2024 campaign:
Dems: "YOU ROLLED BACK REGULATIONS!"
Repubs: "YOU BAILED OUT COMMUNIST CHINAMEN!"
ad infinitum.
Here are some very wise words from the very wise wizard Chanos 👇