Sam Bankman-Fried accused of ‘stealing’ from clients in final stage of fraud trial

2023-11-01 20:00:37

The prosecution accused Sam Bankman-Fried, co-founder of FTXof having “stolen” money from his platform clients, during the final arguments of the trial against him in New York, in which the young businessman denied having committed fraud.

This case “does not deal with complex issues about cryptocurrencies,” said prosecutor Nicolas Roos. to the jury after several days of trial in which Bankman-Fried gave his testimony and was questioned by the defense and prosecution.

“It’s about lies. It’s about theft. It’s about greed,” he said of the 31-year-old former executive whose fortune in crypto assets evaporated after the bankruptcy of his platform. If convicted, Bankman-Fried could face 110 years in prison.

Bankman-Fried, known in the industry as SBF, is accused of using, without consent, client funds of cryptocurrency exchange FTX to fuel risky investments for the company’s Alameda Research fund, but also to purchase real estate in the Bahamas.

Rise and fall of Bankman-Fried, the cryptocurrency genius whose company lost US$8.7 billion

The total of this flow of funds was estimated at 14,000 million dollars.

In the spring of 2022, the cryptocurrency industry was rocked by a series of bankruptcies that dropped the value of crypto assets, including those of Alameda. In November last year, its platform imploded, unable to cope with massive withdrawal requests from clients concerned about the firm’s operations.

When the dust settled, about $8.7 billion was missing, according to the administrator who handled the liquidation. The prosecution argued that the jury will have to decide whether “the defendant knew that taking the money was wrong.” “He knew it but he did it anyway,” Roos said.

Bankman-Fried accepted during the trial that he made management “errors”, but flatly denied having committed fraud. He maintained that he was an overworked young businessman who discovered Alameda’s problems too late and that his directives to manage risks were ignored by his collaborators at the firm, including his ex-girlfriend, Caroline Ellison, who ran the company.

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