NEW YORK CITY: The United States government on Tuesday charged Samuel Bankman-Fried, the founder and former chief executive officer (CEO) of cryptocurrency exchange FTX, with a host of financial crimes, alleging that he intentionally deceived customers and investors to enrich himself and others while playing a central role in the company's multibillion-dollar collapse.

Federal prosecutors said Bankman-Fried devised 'a scheme and artifice to defraud' FTX's customers and investors beginning in 2019, the year it was founded. He illegally diverted their money to cover expenses, debts and risky trades at the crypto hedge fund he started in 2017, Alameda Research, and to make lavish real estate purchases and large political donations, prosecutors said in a 13-page indictment.