At the end of the day the FTX crew were still outsiders. They tried to buy political influence, but the type of regulatory capture that F500 companies enjoy takes decades to cultivate.
They don’t just steal the customer money and buy themselves luxury real estate.
The fix guys are in trouble because they were both very corrupt and very bad at creating even the thinnest veneer of plausible deniability.
They were operating a shadow bank and unregulated securities exchange in the Bahamas and Hong Kong.
The media and regulators were willing to take a sympathetic view to all of the openly illegal banking and securities violations while times were good, but they were performing a highline act with no safety net the whole time.