More from The trial and sentencing of FTX co-founder Sam Bankman-Fried
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Kevin Dugan’s overview really sums it up: stripped of the affectations, we discovered there wasn’t much to Sam Bankman-Fried at all.
[Intelligencer]
Cryptocurrency advocates might believe that FTX’s collapse was an anomaly — but they could have trouble convincing the public of the same.
Over five weeks, the FTX founder’s parents watched from the galleys — deluded, humiliated, and finally, defeated.
The jury only started deliberating a few hours ago, but after all of the testimony and evidence, they notified court officials they reached a verdict, as former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried faces seven charges, including wire fraud. We’ll have their decision here as soon as it is available.
According to a report from CNBC, the media will see it in about 10 minutes.
The 12-person jury will decide whether Bankman-Fried is guilty of seven criminal charges, including two counts of wire fraud. If convicted, Bankman-Fried faces over 100 years in prison.
The Verge’s Elizabeth Lopatto has been tracking the case from the courtroom, and from what she’s seen so far, it doesn’t look like Bankman-Fried’s defense has brought too many convincing arguments to the table:
The closing arguments made clear was how lopsided the case was. Bankman-Fried’s defense appears to be that he is a nice boy who would never do anything to hurt anyone on purpose... Bankman-Fried is right to be frightened. He brought excuses. The prosecution brought receipts.
Mistakes aren’t illegal, but fraud is — and Bankman-Fried’s lawyers never made his defense land.
That’s what experienced litigator Mitchell Epner wrote about this incident during the cross-examination of Sam Bankman-Fried. Elizabeth Lopatto’s summary of SBF’s final day of testimony captures it as part of being “vivisected” on the stand.
It was not until Judge Lewis Kaplan intervened to ask if Bankman-Fried had ever been told by Yedidia about that money, in words or in substance, that Bankman-Fried admitted he’d been told.
Trying to worm his way past tough questions by answering a slightly different question doesn’t seem to work as well for SBF in court as it did with investors and interviewers.
His employees told him he ‘should stop asking questions because it was distracting.’
Sam Bankman-Fried’s lawyers are done calling witnesses in the big FTX fraud case over the cryptocurrency exchange’s collapse last year. The lawyers are likely preparing to make their closing arguments, and Elizabeth Lopatto will have more reports from the courtroom later today, following last night’s story on all the things SBF conveniently doesn’t remember.
Sam Bankman-Fried doesn’t recall
One of the books, Zeke Faux’s Number Go Up, was given to Bankman-Fried on the witness stand yesterday (He did not recall anything he was quoted as saying, naturally). The author of the other, Michael Lewis, was sitting in the gallery.
As an avowed John Lanchester fangirl, you can imagine the delighted, high-pitched noise I made when I saw he’d reviewed both books.
[London Review of Books]
Bankman-Fried gets a shot at his side of the FTX story — then promptly shreds his own credibility with the jury.
Said Sam Bankman-Fried, as reported by Inner City Press and the New York Times, on the stand testifying as he faces fraud charges over the collapse of his failed crypto exchange FTX.
He was explaining the advantage of marketing his exchange by buying stadium naming rights instead of Facebook or Google ads, and why he picked the Miami Heat’s arena over several others... and allegedly paid for the deal with FTX customer funds.
[The New York Times]
However, unlike yesterday’s testimony, the jury members who will rule on the multiple fraud accusations he’s facing are present too. As Elizabeth Lopatto reports, what he’s said so far shows his defense is going to rely on an argument that he was operating on the advice of his lawyers, and we have some guesses about how well that might work out.
Somehow, the least suspicious parts of his defense are the 288 auto-deleting Signal conversations.
The prosecution’s case against Sam Bankman-Fried had a lot of collateral damage.
The mix in the courtroom for the Sam Bankman-Fried / FTX trial has been reporters, occasional members of the general public, curious lawyers, crypto influencers... and one very devoted degen. Fellow line-stander David Yaffe-Bellany profiles Taco, who politely refused to tell me his government name.
[The New York Times]
We are very close to the end of the prosecution’s case, and today was pretty uneventful. I will be writing a wrap of some of the financial testimony shortly, but if you can’t wait, the talented reporters at CoinDesk have been doing all-hands-on-deck coverage.
The majority of FBI agent Richard Busik’s testimony seemed geared toward establishing jurisdiction — he was explaining cell phone pings that occurred in New York City — so I left it out of my recap.
But in order to tie Sam Bankman-Fried to the cell phone number, CoinDesk reports how the prosecution picked perhaps the funniest possible email: the Bahamian Prime Minister asking for a favor.
Nishad Singh looks less reliable. Is it enough?
Nishad Singh says he tried to get Bankman-Fried to do the right thing — but he wouldn’t listen.