Sam Bankman-Fried, as of last year prominent businessman of the field of cryptocurrencieswho was on trial for fraud, conspiracy and money laundering, was found guilty of all seven counts by a New York jury after a five-week trial.
Fallen cryptocurrency star, son of Stanford law professors, is now faces up to 110 years in prison. His sentence will be announced at a later date (March 28, 2024). The prosecution accused him of unknowingly spending funds deposited by his clients on the cryptocurrency exchange platform FTX, which filed for bankruptcy in November 2022.
With these sums he fueled transactions and high-risk placements of his investment company, Alameda Research. “Judge the guilty,” prosecutor Danielle Sassoon, who represented Manhattan U.S. Attorney Damian Williams, said yesterday morning.
He described the accused as talented, ambitious, a man capable of awe-inspiring the public, the press, and even members of Congress, where he had testified three times: “this is someone who he wanted to be president of the USA“, he recalled.
He sought to make FTX the world’s largest cryptocurrency platform, lusted after grandeur, he continued; along the way, he spent “billions from his clients’ accounts to gain power” and to “do (public) relations”, hammered the public prosecutor’s office. Having “the arrogance to think he could he commits fraud and escapes.”
Sam Bankman-Fried admitted he made “big mistakes” but claimed he never broke the law intentionally. The defense presented the MIT graduate, 31, as a young, inexperienced businessman who acted in good faith. In order to acquit the defendant, the jury would have to “believe that he didn’t understand anything” of what was happening in his companies, argued another prosecutor, Nicholas Russ, adding that after the trial “you now know that’s not true ». After a few hours of deliberation, the jury reached a verdict that surprised no one.
The case began a year ago, when the website CoinDesk, which specializes in covering news about the economy, especially cryptocurrencies, revealed that much of the assets of Sam Bankman-Fried’s investment firm Alameda Research (or “SBF”, from the initials of his first name) actually consisted of or connected to a cryptocurrency created by the FTX platform, FTT, and other problematic as suspicious dimensions of its activity. These revelations led to the collapse of that particular digital currency and the SBF empire with it. His personal property ($26 billion, according to Fortune magazine) dissipated.
After his extradition from the Bahamas, where FTX was headquartered, he was charged and brought to trial, primarily for fraud and conspiracy and conspiracy. The collapse of Mr Bankman-Freid’s conglomerate, which has been likened to the Enron and Bernie Madoff cases, shocked markets last year.
His defense plans to appeal.
He is expected to be arraigned in a second trial, for bribery and bank fraud.
Source: News Beast
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