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The Securities and Exchange Commission on Tuesday said it had charged Samuel Bankman-Fried with defrauding investors in FTX, the crypto trading platform he cofounded.

In its complaint, the SEC accused Bankman-Fried of "orchestrating a massive, years-long fraud" by diverting "billions of dollars" of FTX's customer funds for "his own personal benefit and to help grow his crypto empire."

The disgraced crypto star, arrested on Monday in the Bahamas, raised over $1.8 billion from investors, the SEC said in its complaint. 

The SEC accuses Bankman-Fried of diverting FTX customers' funds to Alameda Research, his crypto hedge fund, without users' consent as well as using the funds to make "undisclosed venture investments, lavish real estate purchases, and large political donations," per the complaint.

The SEC announced in its complaint that Bankman-Fried kept this information private, and hid it from equity investors of FTX. The commission said his statements about customer assets being safe and secure were "false and misleading."

"We allege that Sam Bankman-Fried built a house of cards on a foundation of deception while telling investors that it was one of the safest buildings in crypto," SEC chair Gary Gensler said in a statement.

In November, Bankman-Fried continued to mislead investors because he needed money "to plug a multi-billion-dollar hole," the SEC claimed in the complaint.

The commission accused Bankman-Fried of violating sections of the Securities Act of 1933 and the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, per the complaint.

FTX, which Bankman-Fried cofounded, and its affiliates collapsed in mid-November.

Bankman-Fried was arrested in the Bahamas on Monday based on a "sealed indictment" from US authorities, the US Attorney's Office Southern District of New York announced on social media.

Authorities are "likely" to request extradition of Bankman-Fried, the Bahamas attorney general, Sen. Ryan Pinder KC, said in a statement.