Sam Bankman-Fried Found Guilty in Crypto Trial

Sam Bankman-Fried is guilty on all seven federal charges in his criminal trial for defrauding customers of his crypto exchange out of billions of dollars with his crypto empire, jurors decided on Thursday night in a Southern District of New York court, Reuters reports. Jurors reached a verdict at 7:40 p.m., according to CoinDesk, that the founder of the cryptocurrency exchange FTX and Alameda Research was guilty, and Bankman-Fried could face decades in prison. Sentencing is set for March 28, 2024.

WatchThe Biggest Crypto Heists of 2022…So Far CCShare SubtitlesOffEnglishThe trial of Bankman-Fried shed light on the chaos and deception that took place in the final months before FTX’s collapse, as well as the AdvertisementNone of this was communicated to customers of FTX, who believed their money was reflected by the number listed on their account, but this was not the case from as early as March 2021. Customer funds peaked at FTX in June 2022 at over $11 billion, but its bank accounts only held $2.3 billion. Those details came to light under AdvertisementFormer Alameda Research CEO Caroline Ellison testified for the prosecution, saying SBF directed her to commit certain crimes. Ellison revealed that at one point, FTX considered mother. SBF also asked Ellison to create alternate presentations of Alameda’s finances when the company was in massive debt. The testimony from the former CEO, who is also SBF’s ex-girlfriend, showed SBF’s awareness of his company’s dire finances.The man himself not recall certain details over 100 times. The founder of FTX and Alameda painted himself as a well-intentioned but busy CEO, which made him largely ignorant of the inner workings of his companies. To see him as innocent, “you’d have to believe the defendant, who graduated from MIT and built two multibillion-dollar companies, was actually clueless,” said the prosecution in closing arguments.AdvertisementTestimony from director of engineering Nishad Singh and chief technology officer Gary Wang contradicted SBF’s claims of ignorance. Singh and Wang built the code that gave Alameda special privileges to abuse customer funds and did so at the direction of their founder. When Singh asked SBF how much FTX was short, SBF said this was the “wrong question,” and the better question to ask was “How can we deliver?” The true figure was roughly $8 billion.The maximum sentence for SBF’s crimes was estimated to be around 115 years in prison, but legal experts estimate a sentence of 10 to 20 years, according to CoinDesk.

Based on reporting by gizmodo.com.