Sentencing is scheduled for March 28.
Bankman-Fried’s lawyer recommended his consumer will enchantment the conviction. “We respect the jury’s choice. However we’re very upset with the end result,” protection legal professional Mark Cohen mentioned in a press release. “Mr. Bankman Fried maintains his innocence and can proceed to vigorously combat the fees in opposition to him.”
Bankman-Fried is accused of being one of many largest monetary fraudsters in historical past, whose victims suffered practically $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 route, the jury discovered.
“The cryptocurrency trade is likely to be new; gamers like Sam Bankman-Fried is likely to be new. However this type of fraud, this type of corruption, is as previous as time, and we’ve got no persistence for it,” U.S. Lawyer Damian Williams mentioned.
Bankman-Fried’s dad and mom, Stanford professors Joseph Bankman and Barbara Fried — who grew to become 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, dealing with the jury, because the foreman introduced the findings on every rely. Fried appeared to carry again tears, then plugged her ears along with her fingers as U.S. District Choose Lewis A. Kaplan recommended the jurors for his or her work.
Earlier than leaving the courtroom, Bankman-Fried turned and gave his dad and mom a single nod and a delicate smile.
Within the 5 weeks the trial performed out on the highest flooring 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 deceive traders.
However essentially the most damaging testimony arguably got here from Bankman-Fried himself. For the prospect to inform his facet of the story one closing time, the disgraced crypto mogul sat via 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 show what the prosecution described as a gradual 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 finally it collapsed, leaving numerous victims in its wake,” Roos mentioned.
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 trade Binance. Ellison responded that the enterprise solely had half that quantity available and must borrow the remaining from FTX clients, in keeping with her testimony. Bankman-Fried advised 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 mentioned in his closing argument.
Prosecutors mentioned Bankman-Fried tapped buyer funds once more that fall to fund $3 billion in enterprise investments, regardless of Ellison warning that the spending might 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 sturdy case, trial observers have mentioned.
“Even in an advanced case, the jury can typically are available in shortly,” mentioned Harry Sandick, a former assistant U.S. legal professional within the Southern District of New York. “Right here the federal government made it simple for them: The proof got here in cleanly, and the federal government’s summation tied up any free ends.”
Thursday’s verdict comes precisely one 12 months after the publication of a CoinDesk article that highlighted the unusually shut ties between Bankman-Fried’s two corporations, 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 tens of millions on high-profile promoting, hiring megastars resembling 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 trade. At its peak, Bankman-Fried’s internet price was estimated within the tens of billions.
“We thought that we would be capable of construct one of the best product available on the market,” Bankman-Fried mentioned in testimony final week. “It turned out mainly the other of that. Lots of people obtained damage.”
Newmyer reported from Washington.
