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Sentencing is scheduled for March 28.
Bankman-Fried’s lawyer steered his consumer will attraction the conviction. “We respect the jury’s choice. However we’re very upset with the consequence,” protection legal professional Mark Cohen stated in a press release. “Mr. Bankman Fried maintains his innocence and can proceed to vigorously struggle the costs towards him.”
Bankman-Fried is accused of being one of many largest monetary fraudsters in historical past, whose victims suffered almost $10 billion in losses after FTX misappropriated buyer funds to spend lavishly on luxurious actual property, investments, and “darkish cash” political donations, all at his path, the jury discovered.
“The cryptocurrency business is perhaps new; gamers like Sam Bankman-Fried is perhaps new. However this sort of fraud, this sort of corruption, is as outdated as time, and we have now no persistence for it,” U.S. Lawyer Damian Williams stated.
Bankman-Fried’s mother and father, Stanford professors Joseph Bankman and Barbara Fried — who turned fixtures within the courtroom seated behind their son all through the trial — embraced one another within the moments earlier than the decision was introduced. The defendant stood frozen, going through the jury, because the foreman introduced the findings on every rely. Fried appeared to carry again tears, then plugged her ears together with her fingers as U.S. District Decide Lewis A. Kaplan recommended the jurors for his or her work.
Earlier than leaving the courtroom, Bankman-Fried turned and gave his mother and father a single nod and a comfortable smile.
Within the 5 weeks the trial performed out on the highest ground of the Daniel Patrick Moynihan U.S. Courthouse in Manhattan, the jury heard from Bankman-Fried’s former romantic accomplice and the previous CEO of hedge fund Alameda Analysis, Caroline Ellison; former FTX executives Nishad Singh and Gary Wang; and Bankman-Fried’s school roommate, Adam Yedidia. They supplied constant accounts, backed by documentary proof, implicating Bankman-Fried because the mastermind of a sweeping scheme to steal buyer funds and misinform buyers.
However essentially the most damaging testimony arguably got here from Bankman-Fried himself. For the possibility to inform his facet of the story one last time, the disgraced crypto mogul sat by way of a gutting cross-examination by prosecutor Danielle Sassoon. She used Bankman-Fried’s personal phrases, together with from a whirlwind set of interviews he gave within the wake of his empire’s collapse, to reveal what the prosecution described as a gentle stream of lies.
Throughout that questioning, Bankman-Fried claimed greater than 140 occasions to not keep in mind key particulars or his personal statements, a indisputable fact that prosecutor Nicolas Roos famous in his closing argument Wednesday.
“This was a pyramid of deceit constructed by the defendant on a basis of lies and false guarantees, all to get cash, and ultimately it collapsed, leaving numerous victims in its wake,” Roos stated.
In prosecutors’ telling, Bankman-Fried presided over a simple fraud dressed up as a breakthrough monetary innovation. They traced Bankman-Fried’s theft of buyer funds to 2021, when he ordered Ellison to spend $2 billion to purchase again the FTX stake owned by rival crypto change Binance. Ellison responded that the enterprise solely had half that quantity readily available and must borrow the remainder from FTX clients, based on her testimony. Bankman-Fried informed her to proceed anyway.
“It’s clear as day the defendant is aware of that they’re stealing and committing fraud. And that’s precisely what they do,” Roos stated in his closing argument.
Prosecutors stated Bankman-Fried tapped buyer funds once more that fall to fund $3 billion in enterprise investments, regardless of Ellison warning that the spending may show ruinous if the crypto market went south.
Bankman-Fried’s protection attorneys tried to current him as a well-meaning if overwhelmed entrepreneur who paid too little consideration to mounting dangers and trusted an excessive amount of in his underlings.
However the authorities introduced a really robust case, trial observers have stated.
“Even in a sophisticated case, the jury can generally are available in rapidly,” stated Harry Sandick, a former assistant U.S. legal professional within the Southern District of New York. “Right here the federal government made it straightforward for them: The proof got here in cleanly, and the federal government’s summation tied up any unfastened ends.”
Thursday’s verdict comes precisely one yr after the publication of a CoinDesk article that highlighted the unusually shut ties between Bankman-Fried’s two firms, FTX and Alameda, prompting a sequence of occasions that led to the downfall of one of many crypto world’s most seen figures.
FTX was one of many largest crypto buying and selling exchanges, and the corporate spent hundreds of thousands on high-profile promoting, hiring megastars comparable to quarterback Tom Brady and comic Larry David as pitchmen. Bankman-Fried, in the meantime, cultivated a picture as a philanthropist and champion of regulation for his business. At its peak, Bankman-Fried’s web value was estimated within the tens of billions.
“We thought that we’d be capable to construct the most effective product available on the market,” Bankman-Fried stated in testimony final week. “It turned out mainly the other of that. Lots of people received harm.”
Newmyer reported from Washington.
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