02/11/2023 – 21:27
Sam Bankman-Fried, former cryptocurrency tycoon, was found guilty this Thursday (2) by a jury in New York of seven counts of fraud, embezzlement and criminal association.
The jury reached its decision after a five-week trial, and Bankman-Fried now faces a sentence of up to 110 years in prison. The sentence will be handed down at a later date.
The month-long federal trial was a nightmare for Bankman-Fried, as several people close to him testified that he was instrumental in every decision that made $8 billion disappear from his platform. FTX.
Bankman-Fried, 31, was until late last year a poster boy for the cryptocurrency industry, before his empire collapsed spectacularly.
In their closing arguments, prosecutors portrayed the defendant as an extremely intelligent man consumed by greed who knew what he was doing when FTX money was secretly funneled into his personal hedge fund.
“Consider him guilty,” U.S. Attorney Danielle Sassoon told the jury Thursday. “He was ambitious” and had “the arrogance to think he could get away with fraud,” she added.
The defense stated that their client acted in “good faith” and was overwhelmed by circumstances and the financial ineptitude of close associates who would have testified against him to obtain leniency from prosecutors.
The star witness was Bankman-Fried’s ex-colleague and ex-girlfriend, Caroline Ellison, who told the jury that they had stolen “around US$14 billion” (RS69.4 billion) from customers of the trading platform. cryptocurrencies FTX before it went into bankruptcy last year.
The money was used to support Alameda Research, Bankman-Fried’s personal hedge fund, for which he chose Ellison as CEO.
In November 2022, the FTX empire imploded, unable to handle mass withdrawal requests from panicked customers upon learning that some of FTX’s funds had been compromised in risky trades.
This money was used to fund venture capital deals, political contributions, as well as luxury properties in the Bahamas.
It was also used to pay tens of millions of dollars to celebrities, including Tom Brady and Gisele Bundchen, to obtain their endorsement for FTX.
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