The FTX bankruptcy trustee is charging $18 million in fees (or however much he's charging) to run a team of people who have been auditing and unfucking FTX's and Alameda's books for the past four months, and will continue to for a long, long while going forward.

He's not paid $18 million to deal with any single problem with the money of a firm that kept no ~books, but had >100 offshore shell companies to conceal the flow of money, and a million people screaming at it that they are owed money. He and his team is paid to deal with the whole thing.

Also, about $10 million of that has been legal fees. [1]

[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2023/02/08/ftx-bankruptcy-fees-near-20-...

> The FTX bankruptcy trustee will charge $18 million in fees to claw back that 10 mil

$18 m? I thought they charged $700 m to claw back money in the Madoff case. (I may be off by one order of magnitude though). People in charge of these claw backs are thieves too and they go for easy money, legally, with the benediction of the state, at the expense of people who've been scammed.