Silicon Valley law firm Fenwick & West has agreed to pay $54 million to settle claims that it helped enable Sam Bankman-Fried’s misconduct at collapsed crypto exchange FTX, according to a court filing in Miami.
The same filing confirms additional settlements totaling $12.17 million from auditor Prager Metis and former NBA player Udonis Haslem. Together, this second wave of FTX-related settlements reaches $66 million.
All three defendants deny wrongdoing. Fenwick said it was unaware of any fraud at FTX.
The case is before U.S. District Judge K. Michael Moore in the Southern District of Florida and stems from FTX’s November 2022 collapse, which left more than one million users with losses.
Class structure and payout framework
Attorneys Adam Moskowitz and David Boies, representing FTX customers, asked Judge Moore to certify a single, global class that would cover:
- all users who held digital assets or fiat currency on FTX,
- those who participated in yield programs, and
- those who bought FTX’s native token.
Court papers say the class could include millions of claimants.
The plaintiffs also asked the court to appoint JND Legal Administration, rather than the FTX bankruptcy estate, to run the new settlement payout process. They argue that using an outside administrator would simplify distributions and lower costs.
Under the proposal:
- any amount already received through the FTX bankruptcy would be deducted from a claimant’s new recovery, and
- assets would be valued using market prices as of May 14.
Foreign plaintiffs seek exclusion
A separate group of 21 plaintiffs from Asia and Europe has asked to be carved out of any broad settlement orders.
That group, which includes individuals and companies from Hong Kong, Singapore, the U.K., the European Union and South Korea, told the court it is pursuing an independent $500 million lawsuit and does not want its claims impaired by the Miami class action resolution.
Attorney Anthony Scordo represents the foreign plaintiffs.
Links to earlier settlements and ongoing litigation
The new deals add three defendants to an earlier settlement group of 15 individuals, including:
- FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried,
- former executives Caroline Ellison, Nishad Singh and Gary Wang, and
- multiple celebrity promoters.
Those earlier agreements received preliminary approval between December 2024 and July 2025.
Despite the Miami settlement, Fenwick still faces a separate $525 million lawsuit in Washington, D.C., brought by 20 alleged victims. That case accuses the firm and several individual lawyers of malpractice and negligence. It remains active and is not affected by the Florida deal.
The Miami filing also points to a 2024 case against another law firm tied to the FTX bankruptcy that was later withdrawn after an independent examiner reported no evidence of misconduct.
Relationship to the bankruptcy estate and broader recoveries
This round of professional-services settlements comes on top of substantial recoveries moving through the main bankruptcy estate. The FTX estate reports it has now distributed roughly $10 billion to former customers across several payment rounds and recovered over $5 billion in assets for the estate itself.
Most U.S. customers and many other creditor groups in the Chapter 11 process have been made whole based on the allowed value of their claims, with:
- U.S. customers generally reaching 100% recovery, and
- smaller convenience class claimants receiving 120% of claim value.
However, all of these payouts are based on the U.S. dollar value of customer assets at the market lows of November 2022, not their significantly higher current crypto prices. That valuation methodology remains a point of friction for some parties.
The bankruptcy estate has also scheduled a May 29, 2026 payment date for preferred equity holders. Earlier large-scale distributions — including about $5 billion in May 2025 and $2.2 billion in March 2026 — were followed by visible effects across digital-asset markets as capital returned to circulation, a dynamic traders are closely watching ahead of the next tranche.
Background: criminal case and regulatory fallout
More than three years after FTX’s collapse, Bankman-Fried is serving a 25-year federal sentence for stealing nearly $8 billion from customers.
The civil suits against Fenwick, auditors and promoters focus on whether outside advisers and public figures helped construct or legitimize a corporate structure that allowed the misuse of customer funds, offering traders and creditors an additional recovery channel beyond the bankruptcy.
Judge Moore must still grant preliminary approval for the current $66 million in settlements before any distributions can begin. A final approval hearing is expected within 90 days of that preliminary ruling.
Fenwick, Moskowitz and Scordo did not respond to requests for comment.
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