Fenwick & West and Prager Metis — FTX's former outside counsel and auditor — have agreed to pay a combined $66 million to settle class-action claims brought by FTX customers in Miami federal court. The agreement, announced May 22, 2026, marks the largest professional-liability recovery for FTX customers to date.
The bulk of the settlement falls on Fenwick & West: the Silicon Valley law firm agreed to pay $54 million to resolve allegations that it aided and abetted fraud by structuring the corporate frameworks that allowed FTX to misappropriate customer funds and sidestep regulatory oversight. Customers alleged Fenwick helped construct what they described as "shadowy entities" purpose-built to siphon client assets and evade scrutiny. The firm denies wrongdoing, maintaining it provided conventional legal advice to the exchange.
Prager Metis, FTX's former auditor, is paying $11.75 million as part of the same settlement package. Former Miami Heat forward Udonis Haslem — an FTX promoter — is contributing an additional $420,000, rounding the combined figure to $66 million. The settlement is pending judicial approval and is not final.
The $66 million is the largest single professional-liability recovery since FTX's November 2022 bankruptcy, but it represents a fraction of total customer losses, which ran into the billions. For context: Prager Metis previously settled SEC charges for $1.95 million in September 2024 — the gap between that figure and its current $11.75 million payout reflects different legal exposure across proceedings. The combined $66 million here exceeds earlier FTX settlement rounds that targeted other advisers and promotional partners.
The Fenwick settlement carries a significant asterisk. It covers only the Miami class action. A separate lawsuit filed by individual plaintiffs — not a class — in Washington, D.C. federal court is seeking $525 million in damages from Fenwick and several of its individual partners. That case is unaffected by the Miami agreement and remains active.
What it means structurally. The Fenwick settlement is notable for who it targets: not insiders, promoters, or exchanges, but the professional advisers — the lawyers who structured the entity architecture. Class actions against law firms for their transactional work are rare and difficult to win; a $54 million settlement without a liability finding still signals that enough legal risk existed to make paying out worthwhile. The pending D.C. suit, at nearly ten times the Miami amount, is the more material exposure remaining on the books for Fenwick.
The settlement requires court approval before funds flow to customers. No timeline for that approval has been publicly set.
Sources: Reuters (Mike Scarcella, May 22, 2026); The Block (May 23, 2026); CryptoBriefing (May 23, 2026).