‘Shark Tank’ star says $15m FTX payout wiped out: ‘Everything is zero’

“Shark Tank” star Kevin O’Leary said FTX paid him $15 million to be a spokesperson for the company, but lost almost all of it when the crypto exchange crashed.

In an interview with CNBC on Thursday, O’Leary said he deposited about $9.7 million of his spokesman’s check into crypto tokens with his FTX account, which dropped to zero after the exchange crashed last month.

He had $1 million tied up in FTX stock, which is also worthless now. O’Leary said the remaining $4 million in the deal went toward taxes and agent fees.

“The whole deal was less than $15 million, everything is at zero,” he said. “It was not a good investment.

“Mr. Wonderful” told CNBC that he spoke with the former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried about the lost funds last weekend.

O’Leary said he told the shameless crypto mogul, “Look Sam, I’m the only investor, but my account has a zero, and there’s no accounting records. Where did the money go? I need to find out where the money went.”

O’Leary admitted that he fell into the “groupthink” hole, drinking the Kool-Aid of institutional investors to get into crypto exchanges.

“They all look stupid. We relied on each other’s due diligence,” he said.

Despite losing millions of his own money, the billionaire has stopped short of condemning Bankman-Fried in a legal sense, saying he’s waiting for a full audit of the company before anyone accuses the FTX founder of anything.

FTX filed for bankruptcy on November 11. In a recent interview, Bankman-Fried He said he had “misjudged”. A whopping $8 billion before imploding on FTX’s balance sheet.