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S.B.F. & The Mooch’s Arabian Nights

What could possibly go wrong on a heavy-duty fundraising trip to the Middle East (with cameos from M.B.S., Jared, and Schwarzman) with FTX secretly on the brink of collapse?

Anthony Scaramucci first met S.B.F. over Zoom, in and around March 2021, at the suggestion of a mutual friend.
Anthony Scaramucci first met S.B.F. over Zoom, in and around March 2021, at the suggestion of a mutual friend. Photo: Chris Williamson/Getty Images
William D. Cohan
April 19, 2023

We may never know exactly what Sam Bankman-Fried was up to in the months preceding the collapse of his crypto empire, but one of the few people in his orbit during that time was Anthony Scaramucci, who was at various points a mentor and a mark. Anthony and I have talked on several previous occasions about his friendship with S.B.F., including their financial partnership (FTX acquired a 30 percent stake in Scaramucci’s hedge fund, Skybridge Capital) and their October 2022 trip together to Saudi Arabia to try to raise capital for FTX from Mohammed bin Salman. A few weeks ago, I interviewed The Mooch at a private event at Faena Rose, in Miami Beach, where we dug deeper into his relationship with S.B.F., including those fateful months leading up to the FTX bankruptcy filing last November.