Samuel Bankman$-$Fried, of Stanford, California, was sentenced to $25$ years in prison, three years of supervised release, and ordered to pay $$11$ billion in forfeiture for orchestrating multiple fraudulent schemes.

Bankman$-$Fried, the founder of the cryptocurrency exchange FTX and the cryptocurrency trading firm Alameda Research, misappropriated billions of dollars of customer funds deposited with FTX$,$ defrauded investors in FTX of more than $$1\mathrm{.}7$ billion and defrauded lenders to Alameda of more than $$1\mathrm{.}3$ billion.

The fraud ended in November $2022.$ What first appeared to be an accounting oversight was actually a major fraud, and customers and investors lost billions of dollars. It was discovered that customer funds went to accounts controlled by Alameda Research$$a cryptocurrency trading firm headquartered in Hong Kong$$instead of FTX$.$ After this revelation, FTX began to unravel.

$1/$ Describe the fraud and how it worked.

$2/$ Could a single person do this fraud, or were many other employees involved who were voluntary participants and knew they were committing crimes? Why would employees participate in a scam?

$3/$ As a forensic accountant$/$investigator$,$ how would you examine and collect the evidence for legal purposes?

$4/$ What types of physical, documentary, observational, and interview evidence was collected by the authorities in this case?