The feds seized a stake in Anthropic from Sam Bankman-Fried's friends. What happened to the shares?

Two associates of Sam Bankman-Fried invested in Anthropic.

After they were sentenced for fraud, their shares entered a legal black hole.

ANGELA WEIS/Getty Images; Tyler Le/BI Sam Bankman-Fried's Anthropic stake was liquidated in bankruptcy court two years ago.

The feds seized shares belonging to two co-conspirators, Caroline Ellison and Nishad Singh.

The government quietly sold those Anthropic shares last year.

It's unclear where the money will go.

A little over a year ago, the federal government acquired a stake in Anthropic without paying a penny.

The shares were seized from associates of the crypto fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried .

From there, they disappeared into a legal black hole.

As Anthropic rockets toward what could be the biggest IPO in history , those shares could now be worth billions of dollars.

Bankman-Fried's own Anthropic stake was liquidated in the bankruptcy of his failed cryptocurrency exchange.

The Anthropic equity owned by Caroline Ellison and Nishad Singh, two associates who invested alongside him, took a different path.

The government seized those shares and sold them to existing Anthropic shareholders, according to a person familiar with the sale.

It's still unclear whether the proceeds will be paid out to victims of the $11 billion fraud case, or if the feds will just keep the money.