2023-11-03 06:36:33
Accused of fraud, criminal conspiracy and money laundering, fallen cryptocurrency star Sam Bankman-Fried was found guilty of all seven counts Thursday by a jury in New York, following a five-week trial resounding.
Sam Bankman-Fried, nicknamed “SBF”, faces up to 110 years in prison in total. His sentence is to be pronounced at a later date.
The prosecution accuses him of having used, without their knowledge, the funds deposited by the clients of his cryptocurrency exchange platform FTX, which went bankrupt in November 2022. The money fueled risky transactions and investments of his investment firm Alameda Research, whose borrowings from the platform reached up to around $14 billion.
An unsurprising verdict
“Find him guilty,” Danielle Sassoon, representative of Manhattan federal prosecutor Damian Williams, said in the morning. She described him as a “talented boss”, “ambitious”, who “amazed” the public, the press and even the elected representatives of Congress, who auditioned him three times. “He is someone who wanted to become president of the United States,” she recalled.
Consumed by his appetite for grandeur, he wanted to make FTX the first global cryptocurrency exchange platform, according to her. In his race, “he wanted to spend billions taken from his clients’ accounts to gain power and relationships,” said the deputy prosecutor. “He had the arrogance to think he might commit fraud and get away with it.”
In this courtroom sketch, FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried is cross-examined by Manhattan Assistant Federal Attorney Danielle Sassoon, while Judge Lewis Kaplan and jury members listen to the judge’s responses. accused. [Elizabeth Williams / AP Photo – Keystone]
“SBF” admitted, at the hearing, to “big errors”, but always denied knowingly breaking the law. His lawyer portrayed him as a young entrepreneur lacking experience, who had acted in good faith. To exonerate the accused, “you would have to believe that he understood nothing” regarding what was happening within his own companies, another deputy prosecutor Nicolas told the jury at the hearing. Roos.
“You’ve been watching this whole trial and you know none of it is true.” “Now it’s up to you to decide who to believe,” federal judge Lewis Kaplan told the twelve jurors, before they retired to deliberate around 8:15 p.m. Thursday. Within hours, they delivered an unsurprising verdict.
Arrested in the Bahamas then extradited
The “SBF” affair began a year ago, when the media CoinDesk revealed that a considerable part of Alameda’s assets consisted of a cryptocurrency created by FTX, FTT.
The revelation caused the collapse of this digital currency and the “SBF” empire with it. Extradited from the Bahamas, where FTX’s headquarters were located, the young thirty-year-old – now 31 – whose fortune has evaporated, was charged in mid-December with fraud and criminal conspiracy.
>> Reread: Former boss of cryptocurrency platform FTX arrested in Bahamas
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