Financial Forensics: The Due Diligence Files

Sergio Stieben
  • 0.0 (0)
  • Management
  • Updated Daily

Forensic dissection of capital markets collapses. Not headlines — mechanisms. How money moved. Where structures broke. T1 — Full autopsy. The collapse, the actors, the moment nobody stopped it. T2 — GP/LP room. 3 red flags in the documents. Due diligence questions. Active parallels in deals running today. For allocators, GPs, and fund professionals. Hosted by Sergio Stieben — 15 years in GP/LP relations, cross-border finance US-LatAm-Europe. Try FFL Trial, free — run a deal through the same engine, scored against 140 documented collapses: https://financialforensicslabs.com.ar

  1. 4d ago

    FTX Extended 2020 : The Line of Code That Let Alameda Borrow $65 Billion - File 165 T1

    This episode is part of Financial Forensics Labs — two shows, one forensic methodology: The Due Diligence Files traces how institutions collapse, The Signal Files traces how the good calls get made. Built from primary-record research by a 15-year capital markets professional. Get to know the framework, the other show, and the tools built from it — all in one place. Explore ⁠⁠⁠Financial Forensics Labs — Forensic Finance Intelligence⁠⁠ One line of code, buried among millions of others, let a single trading account do something no other account on the exchange was ever allowed to do. This is the financial autopsy of FTX and Alameda Research — how an exchange, its founder's own trading firm, and a token created out of nothing combined to lose roughly $8 billion of customer money in about ten days. Sam Bankman-Fried built FTX into one of the largest crypto exchanges in the world while publicly insisting that Alameda Research, the trading firm he also founded, received no special treatment on the platform. Internally, the opposite was true. In mid-2020, FTX's own code was quietly rewritten to exempt Alameda's account from the automatic liquidation engine every other customer was subject to — allowing Alameda to run a negative balance, drawing on customer deposits without adequate collateral, up to a figure later testified in court to have reached $65 billion. We trace the mechanism from the beginning: the 2019 launch of FTT, FTX's self-issued token with no underlying business behind it; the coded exemption that let Alameda borrow customer funds indefinitely; the engineers at LedgerX who discovered the exemption in 2022 and were ignored; and the ten days in November 2022 that ended it all, starting with a leaked balance sheet showing Alameda's FTT holdings were worth more on paper than the entire circulating supply of the token itself. We cover the full timeline — the November 2nd CoinDesk report, Binance's decision to dump its FTT holdings, Caroline Ellison's public denial, the collapsed Binance acquisition, the November 11th bankruptcy filing, and what John Ray — the same executive who oversaw Enron's wind-down — found when he took over: expense approvals made by emoji reaction, company real estate registered in employees' personal names, and financial controls he called the worst he'd seen in over forty years of restructuring work. Sam Bankman-Fried was convicted on seven counts of fraud and conspiracy in November 2023 and sentenced to 25 years in prison in March 2024, with over $11 billion ordered in forfeiture. This episode is part of Financial Forensics Labs: The Due Diligence Files, a case-by-case forensic breakdown of the collapses, frauds, and governance failures that reshaped markets — built for investors, deal teams, and anyone who wants to understand how these things actually happen, mechanism by mechanism. What you'll learn in this episode:— How a company can create its own asset and use it as circular collateral for related-party lending— Why an insider exemption from a platform's own risk controls is a red flag independent of any specific dollar figure— How a balance sheet can be internally consistent and still be almost entirely fictional— What happened inside FTX in the ten days between a leaked balance sheet and a bankruptcy filing— Why basic corporate governance failures are themselves a diligence signal, separate from the headline numbers Part 2 goes deeper — the GP/LP institutional analysis of the FTT collateral architecture, the three signals that were verifiable before the collapse, and the due diligence framework for evaluating any exchange with an affiliated market maker. Same feed, same case. Financial Forensics Labs: The Due Diligence Files. Every collapse has a pattern. We dissect it. Layer by layer.

  2. 4d ago

    FTX Extended 2020 : Circular Collateral & the Insider Risk Exemption - GP/LP Analysis - File 165 T2

    This episode is part of Financial Forensics Labs — two shows, one forensic methodology: The Due Diligence Files traces how institutions collapse, The Signal Files traces how the good calls get made. Built from primary-record research by a 15-year capital markets professional. Get to know the framework, the other show, and the tools built from it — all in one place. Explore ⁠⁠⁠Financial Forensics Labs — Forensic Finance Intelligence⁠⁠ A piece of collateral is only worth what someone other than the borrower would actually pay for it. This is the GP/LP institutional analysis of FTX and Alameda Research — the mechanism by which an exchange, its self-issued token, and its affiliated trading firm formed a closed loop of value that looked, from the outside, like $14 billion in real collateral. This file goes past the narrative and into the structure: how FTT — created by FTX in 2019 with no underlying business behind it — became the collateral backing Alameda's borrowing through FTX itself, creating a circular structure where the entity issuing the asset, the entity supporting its price, and the entity lending against it as collateral were, in economic substance, the same small group of people. We break down the negative-balance exemption coded directly into FTX's platform software in mid-2020 — the mechanism that let Alameda's account operate completely outside the automatic liquidation engine every other customer was subject to, reportedly reaching $65 billion in uncollateralized exposure, at the exact time Bankman-Fried was telling Congress the risk engine was safe, tested, and conservative. We identify the three signals that were verifiable in public and internal records years, months, and weeks before the collapse — the collateral concentration math sitting in Alameda's own leaked balance sheet, the structural fact of an insider risk-engine exemption independent of any specific dollar figure, and the basic governance failures that told their own story before a single financial number was ever proven false. This episode also connects the mechanism to the Purdue Pharma file from the opposite direction — value that was extracted after being legitimately earned, versus value that was fabricated in real time inside a closed loop that had never once been tested by an outside party. The active due diligence framework covered in this episode runs through three specific checks: how to discount any collateral consisting of a borrower-affiliated or issuer-affiliated token to its real independent market depth rather than an internal mark, how to get a direct answer on whether any insider or related-party account receives different risk treatment than ordinary counterparties, and how to treat basic operational governance — audited financials, standard expense controls, clean corporate title on company-funded assets — as its own diligence category, independent of the headline numbers a company reports. What you'll learn in this episode:— How circular collateral works when an issuer, its market, and its lender are effectively the same entity— Why an internally generated mark on a self-issued asset should never substitute for independent market depth— The specific due diligence question to ask about insider exemptions from a platform's own risk controls— Why basic operational governance is a freestanding diligence category, separate from headline financial metrics— The three-part framework for underwriting exposure to any exchange, market maker, or related-party credit structure This is the institutional layer of the FTX case — built for investors, deal teams, and anyone underwriting exposure to a structure where the numbers all check out internally and still aren't real. Part 1 has the full narrative account, same feed. Financial Forensics Labs: The Due Diligence Files. Every collapse has a pattern. And we dissect it. Layer by layer.

  3. Aug 25

    Purdue Pharma 2019 : The Sackler Fortune & The Bankruptcy Shield│File 164 T1

    This episode is part of Financial Forensics Labs — two shows, one forensic methodology: The Due Diligence Files traces how institutions collapse, The Signal Files traces how the good calls get made. Built from primary-record research by a 15-year capital markets professional. Get to know the framework, the other show, and the tools built from it — all in one place. Explore ⁠⁠Financial Forensics Labs — Forensic Finance Intelligence⁠⁠ In September 2019, Purdue Pharma filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy under the weight of thousands of state, municipal, and individual claims stemming from the nationwide opioid crisis. However, internal balance sheet records show that the company's ultimate financial restructuring began more than a decade prior. Following Purdue’s 2007 federal guilty plea for misbranding OxyContin, ownership dramatically shifted its annual revenue distribution ratio from under 15% to as high as 70%. Between 2008 and 2016, the Sackler family extracted approximately $11 billion from the enterprise, draining roughly three-quarters of its total asset base before the mass tort liabilities could fully crystallize in court. The extracted capital was systematically routed through a web of offshore holding companies, Jersey-based trusts, and Swiss bank accounts, creating a jurisdictional shield designed to complicate future creditor attachment. When Purdue eventually entered bankruptcy court, the controlling family attempted to secure absolute civil immunity through non-consensual third-party releases without ever placing their personal fortunes into federal bankruptcy jurisdiction. Under the initial 2021 reorganization plan, the family proposed contributing $4.5 billion back into the estate over nine years in exchange for a full legal release binding on all claimants, including thousands of victims who explicitly voted against the deal. On June 27, 2024, the United States Supreme Court struck down the proposed architecture in a historic 5-to-4 ruling, establishing that bankruptcy courts lack statutory authority to extinguish claims against non-debtors without explicit claimant consent. This decision forced a revised 2025 settlement framework where family contributions rose to between $6.5 and $7.0 billion—a nearly 60% increase—bound strictly to consenting parties. This financial autopsy dissects the mechanics of pre-bankruptcy asset extraction, offshore wealth preservation, and the collapse of non-debtor release mechanisms in modern corporate restructurings. The Signal Files — Every advantage leaves behind a signal. We trace it.

  4. Aug 25

    Purdue Pharma 2019 : Third-Party Releases vs Creditor Recovery│File 164 T2

    This episode is part of Financial Forensics Labs — two shows, one forensic methodology: The Due Diligence Files traces how institutions collapse, The Signal Files traces how the good calls get made. Built from primary-record research by a 15-year capital markets professional. Get to know the framework, the other show, and the tools built from it — all in one place. Explore ⁠⁠Financial Forensics Labs — Forensic Finance Intelligence⁠⁠ How does a controlling equity holder use a subsidiary's Chapter 11 filing to extinguish personal mass tort liabilities, and why did the Supreme Court's 2024 Purdue Pharma ruling permanently alter distressed credit underwriting? Non-consensual third-party releases historically served as a powerful tool in complex corporate reorganizations, granting non-debtor third parties permanent immunity from civil litigation in exchange for financial settlement contributions. However, the Purdue Pharma file exposes how this mechanism allowed an equity-owning family to extract $11 billion in pre-petition distributions while using the debtor's bankruptcy process to shield off-balance-sheet wealth from involuntary creditors. This GP and LP institutional analysis deconstructs the distribution-to-revenue ratio drift following Purdue's 2007 guilty plea, tracing how capital extraction accelerated precisely as litigation risk intensified. We audit the jurisdictional layering of transferred capital across international jurisdictions and analyze the legal vulnerability of non-debtor release structures prior to the Supreme Court's landmark 2024 decision. For private credit allocators, legacy liability underwriters, and investment committees, this file establishes an active due diligence framework. First, allocators must track related-party distribution drifts relative to emerging regulatory triggers. Second, investment teams must apply a durability discount to recovery models that depend on offshore assets transferred during periods of heightened litigation risk. Third, restructurings relying on non-consensual third-party releases must be modeled as legally contingent assets rather than closed settlements. The Signal Files — Every advantage leaves behind a signal. We trace it.

  5. Aug 21

    Mallinckrodt Opioid Bankruptcy 2025 : It Paid Victims Twice, and Cut Both Times │ File 163 T1

    This episode is part of Financial Forensics Labs — two shows, one forensic methodology: The Due Diligence Files traces how institutions collapse, The Signal Files traces how the good calls get made. Built from primary-record research by a 15-year capital markets professional. Get to know the framework, the other show, and the tools built from it — all in one place. Explore ⁠⁠⁠Financial Forensics Labs — Forensic Finance Intelligence⁠⁠⁠ Mallinckrodt promised $1.6 billion to the victims of the opioid crisis. It negotiated that settlement before it ever filed for bankruptcy, walked through Chapter 11 with the deal already signed, and emerged in 2022 looking like one of the rare opioid cases where victims would actually get paid. Fourteen months later, it filed for bankruptcy again. This episode traces the full arc: Mallinckrodt, the largest generic opioid manufacturer in the US, facing more than 3,000 lawsuits from states, counties, and individuals. In February 2020, months before filing, it reached a tentative $1.6 billion settlement with 47 state attorneys general — against a company-estimated total liability of up to $10 billion. The bankruptcy that followed in October 2020 was pre-arranged, built to move fast because the hardest negotiating had already happened. The plan was confirmed in 2022. Then, by June 2023, Mallinckrodt told the opioid trust it couldn't make a scheduled $200 million payment — while a group of hedge funds, including Silver Point Capital, negotiated to take control of the company through a second Chapter 11 filing. The deal: one final $250 million payment to close out the trust's remaining $1.275 billion claim, and roughly $1 billion of what victims and state governments were promised would simply be discharged. The payment landed on August 24th, 2023. Four days later, Mallinckrodt filed its second bankruptcy in three years. A judge approved it in October, calling it "a reasonable exercise of business judgment." By early 2025, Mallinckrodt was one of the only opioid companies actually paying individual victims — ahead of Purdue Pharma. After administrative fees and attorney costs, those payouts landed between $400 and $700 each. The hedge funds who engineered the second filing walked away holding equity in a reorganized company worth close to $3 billion. Two years later, Mallinckrodt merged with Endo — another opioid-bankruptcy alum — into a $6.7 billion combined company. Every step was legal. Every disclosure was public. This is what happens when bankruptcy stops being an emergency exit and becomes a scheduled tool a company can use twice. Every collapse has a pattern. We dissect it. Layer by layer. Keywords: Mallinckrodt bankruptcy, Mallinckrodt opioid settlement, opioid crisis lawsuits, Chapter 11 mass tort, opioid trust payout, Silver Point Capital, pre-packaged bankruptcy, second bankruptcy hedge funds, opioid victims compensation, distressed debt restructuring, Purdue Pharma comparison, opioid manufacturer lawsuit, generic drug company bankruptcy, mass tort settlement, bankruptcy court restructuring, corporate liability engineering, financial forensics podcast, forensic accounting case study, private credit due diligence, Endo Mallinckrodt merger, opioid epidemic accountability, bankruptcy business judgment standard, contingent value rights, opioid claimant trust, restructuring support agreement, corporate bankruptcy strategy, financial autopsy, Financial Forensics Labs, mass tort bankruptcy pattern, opioid manufacturer settlement, drug company litigation

  6. Aug 21

    Mallinckrodt 2020: Pre-Arranged Bankruptcy & Repeat Chapter 11 Recovery Cut │ GP/LP Analysis - 3 Red Flags │ File 163 T2

    This episode is part of Financial Forensics Labs — two shows, one forensic methodology: The Due Diligence Files traces how institutions collapse, The Signal Files traces how the good calls get made. Built from primary-record research by a 15-year capital markets professional. Get to know the framework, the other show, and the tools built from it — all in one place. Explore ⁠⁠Financial Forensics Labs — Forensic Finance Intelligence⁠⁠ Mallinckrodt's opioid trust was owed $1.6 billion. It closed out that entire obligation with one final $250 million payment — four days before the company filed for bankruptcy a second time. This is the GP/LP breakdown of how a confirmed Chapter 11 plan is not a permanent settlement, and what that means for pricing a mass tort trust's recovery waterfall. The mechanism: Mallinckrodt's first bankruptcy was pre-arranged — a $1.6 billion opioid settlement negotiated with 47 state attorneys general in February 2020, eight months before the October Chapter 11 filing, with a restructuring support agreement already signed. The plan confirmed in March 2022 channeled opioid claims into a hub-and-spoke trust structure, paid partly in cash and partly in contingent value rights — equity-linked instruments whose value depended entirely on the company's future stock performance. That structural choice is the center of this episode: the trust wasn't just owed a payment schedule, it was holding paper whose worth depended on continued goodwill from a company it had no operational control over. By June 2023, Mallinckrodt disclosed it would miss a scheduled $200 million payment. A group of hedge funds — including Silver Point Capital — had by then accumulated the company's post-emergence debt and equity and began negotiating a second Chapter 11 filing that would cut the remaining $1.275 billion claim down to a single $250 million payment and cancel the contingent value rights entirely. The court approved it in October 2023, calling it a reasonable exercise of business judgment — the same low bar that governs nearly every distressed restructuring decision. The three-signal framework covers instrument type (cash vs. equity-linked settlement paper), creditor composition drift (distressed funds accumulating position in a company with unresolved mass tort liability), and how a missed trust payment should be treated as a covenant-breach-level red flag rather than an administrative delay. The active due diligence section adds a fourth check: whether a post-emergence trust has independent counsel with real standing to object to a subsequent filing, or shares infrastructure with the process that already produced one debtor-favorable outcome. Closes with the aftermath — hedge funds emerging with equity in a ~$3 billion reorganized company, victims receiving $400–700 after fees, and the 2025 Mallinckrodt-Endo merger built partly on debt that used to be trust money. Every collapse has a pattern. We dissect it. Layer by layer. Mallinckrodt GP LP analysis, mass tort recovery waterfall, Chapter 11 institutional due diligence, contingent value rights risk, distressed debt creditor composition, opioid trust structuring, private credit mass tort exposure, second bankruptcy risk framework, business judgment standard bankruptcy, restructuring support agreement analysis, Silver Point Capital Mallinckrodt, hedge fund bankruptcy control, post-emergence creditor monitoring, opioid claimant trust structure, hub and spoke trust bankruptcy, institutional credit due diligence, distressed fund accumulation signal, bankruptcy covenant breach analysis, mass tort settlement durability, allocator due diligence framework, forensic accounting GP LP, Chapter 11 recovery pricing, corporate liability engineering, opioid manufacturer credit risk, Financial Forensics Labs, financial autopsy institutional, capital structure mass tort, bankruptcy fraud hexagon rationalization, credit investor red flags opioid, legacy liability due diligence

  7. Aug 18

    Luckin Coffee 2020 Extended: Three Clocks, Three Months │ File 162 T1

    This episode is part of Financial Forensics Labs — two shows, one forensic methodology: The Due Diligence Files traces how institutions collapse, The Signal Files traces how the good calls get made. Built from primary-record research by a 15-year capital markets professional. Get to know the framework, the other show, and the tools built from it — all in one place. Explore ⁠Financial Forensics Labs — Forensic Finance Intelligence⁠ Luckin Coffee 2020, Extended: the fraud is documented. This file covers the three months nobody talks about — the gap between when professional short sellers had the evidence and when Luckin's own board confirmed it publicly. Luckin Coffee opened its first store in Beijing in October 2017 and listed on the Nasdaq in May 2019, raising over six hundred million dollars from backers including BlackRock and GIC Singapore. By the end of 2019 it had more physical locations in China than Starbucks. Underneath that real growth, starting in Q2 2019, the company's COO and a team of employees fabricated roughly three hundred and ten million dollars in sales through employee-funded vouchers and corporate bulk-purchase accounts tied to the chairman's own network. This episode isn't about how the fraud worked. It's about what happened after an anonymous 89-page report — built on 11,260 hours of store surveillance video and over 25,000 customer receipts — started circulating privately among short sellers in January 2020. Muddy Waters read it and shorted the stock. Citron Research read the identical document and stayed long. Two professional fraud hunters, same evidence, opposite conclusions. Three weeks before that report went public, Luckin raised $778 million in a secondary share sale and convertible bond. Weeks before that, its own auditor's China affiliate had privately told investment banks it had no issue with the company's unaudited numbers. The board's special committee didn't confirm the fraud publicly until April 2nd — roughly three months after the evidence first reached short sellers. Luckin's own board had eight members. Two were independent. One director sitting on the audit committee while the fraud was running was removed the same day as the chairman. The episode closes with what happened next: Nasdaq delisting, a $180 million SEC settlement, a Chapter 15 bankruptcy that closed in 2022, Centurium Capital doubling down instead of walking away — and a company that, by 2023, actually had more stores in China than Starbucks, without needing to fake a single number to get there. Every collapse has a pattern. We dissect it. Layer by layer. Keywords: Luckin Coffee fraud, Luckin Coffee scandal, Luckin Coffee 2020, Muddy Waters report, Citron Research, short seller due diligence, Chinese VIE fraud, Nasdaq delisting, corporate governance failure, board independence, audit committee fraud, Ernst Young comfort letter, EY China fraud, accounting fraud China, fabricated revenue, related party transactions, Centurium Capital, Charles Lu Luckin, Jenny Qian, SEC settlement China, Chapter 15 bankruptcy, financial forensics, forensic accounting case study, corporate fraud podcast, investor due diligence, Starbucks China competitor, IPO fraud, Nasdaq foreign issuer, capital markets fraud, whistleblower report, financial autopsy, Financial Forensics Labs

  8. Aug 18

    Luckin Coffee 2020: Governance Detection Lag & Compromised Audit Committee │ GP/LP Analysis - 3 Red Flags │ File 162 T2

    This episode is part of Financial Forensics Labs — two shows, one forensic methodology: The Due Diligence Files traces how institutions collapse, The Signal Files traces how the good calls get made. Built from primary-record research by a 15-year capital markets professional. Get to know the framework, the other show, and the tools built from it — all in one place. Explore ⁠Financial Forensics Labs — Forensic Finance Intelligence⁠ Luckin Coffee 2020, GP/LP Analysis: a market signal and a governance signal are not the same category of warning. This file breaks down why detection speed isn't one number — it's three separate clocks, and Luckin's board ran nearly three months behind the market's. Ninety-two full-time and fourteen hundred part-time investigators logged over 11,000 hours of store surveillance before a single line of the anonymous 89-page report reached the public. Muddy Waters Research called it credible and shorted the stock on January 31, 2020. Citron Research received the identical document and stayed long, after an on-the-ground store visit in Shenzhen. Two adversarial research shops, same evidence, opposite conclusions — and neither outcome tells you what the company's own governance structure was doing. This episode maps that structure. Luckin's board carried eight members with only two independent directors, operating under a Nasdaq home-country exemption available to foreign private issuers. One member of the company's own audit committee during the fabrication period was removed from the board the same day as the chairman, after the internal investigation closed. Weeks before the anonymous report went public, Ernst & Young's China affiliate had issued a private comfort letter to investment banks on unaudited Q1–Q3 2019 numbers — the same numbers later confirmed as fabricated — and Luckin used that window to raise $778 million in a secondary offering and convertible bond. The three-signal due diligence framework covers board composition against listing standards, audit committee membership history (not just headcount), and comfort letter timing relative to capital raises — three checks any allocator can run independently of whether a short report ever surfaces. The active framework section covers what to do when two credible research shops split on identical evidence, and why that disagreement is itself the signal. Closes with the aftermath: Centurium Capital's decision to underwrite the restructuring instead of exiting, the Chapter 15 process that closed in 2022, and a business that, once the fabricated layer was stripped out, outgrew Starbucks in China anyway. Every collapse has a pattern. We dissect it. Layer by layer. Keywords: Luckin Coffee GP LP analysis, Luckin Coffee institutional due diligence, VIE audit gap, Chinese ADR governance risk, Nasdaq foreign private issuer exemption, board independence due diligence, audit committee red flags, EY Hua Ming comfort letter, PCAOB inspection gap, short seller verification framework, Muddy Waters Citron Research, capital markets fraud detection, related party revenue fabrication, credit due diligence China equities, institutional investor red flags, Centurium Capital Luckin, private equity distressed turnaround, Chapter 15 restructuring, SEC settlement disclosure, governance detection lag, corporate governance capture, allocator due diligence framework, forensic accounting GP LP, capital allocation risk, US listed Chinese companies risk, Financial Forensics Labs, financial autopsy institutional, fraud hexagon opportunity, audit committee independence, cross-border enforcement risk

See All (332)

About

Forensic dissection of capital markets collapses. Not headlines — mechanisms. How money moved. Where structures broke. T1 — Full autopsy. The collapse, the actors, the moment nobody stopped it. T2 — GP/LP room. 3 red flags in the documents. Due diligence questions. Active parallels in deals running today. For allocators, GPs, and fund professionals. Hosted by Sergio Stieben — 15 years in GP/LP relations, cross-border finance US-LatAm-Europe. Try FFL Trial, free — run a deal through the same engine, scored against 140 documented collapses: https://financialforensicslabs.com.ar

Information

You Might Also Like