Efforts to recoup them will highlight major flaws in political donations. On Thursday, former Chief Executive Sam Bankman-Fried was hit with additional criminal charges, including an accusation that he conspired with two former FTX executives to make more than 300 illegal political donations. Ray is hoping to add politicians’ returned donations to his coffers, and past blowups suggest he will have some luck. Madoff and Stanford’s political contributions, totaling hundreds of thousands of dollars each, pale in comparison to the $84 million-plus FTX executives gave campaigns. No other FTX executives, including Ryan Salame and Nishad Singh, have been charged with campaign finance violations at this time.

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