The drama continues to unfold in the case of Sam Bankman-Fried, the disgraced FTX cryptocurrency mogul, as prosecutors provide the clearest picture yet on their strategy in his upcoming trial. In a 70-page court filing released Monday, prosecutors outlined their intent to use testimony from Bankman-Fried’s former inner circle, including ex-lover – who flipped on him – and Alameda Research CEO Caroline Ellison, in order to imprison him.
Bankman-Fried, 31, saw his record $250 million bail revoked Friday after allegedly leaking Ellison’s love letters to the New York Times. Prosecutors also plan to use notes Ellison took while working under him as evidence, including a memo she wrote after one conversation with him titled ‘Things Sam Is Freaking Out About.’ Bankman-Fried was the second biggest Democrat donor in the nation.
Bankman-Fried is facing more than 100 years in prison due to a slew of charges related to the collapse of his cryptocurrency exchange FTX in November 2022. The prosecution claims he used client funds moved from Alameda for luxury purchases and political donations.
The evidence set to be presented in court includes a recording of a meeting in which Ellison told her Alameda Research employees Bankman-Fried instructed her to funnel money from customer’s accounts. She is set to testify alongside other ex-FTX lieutenants, Gary Wang and Nishad Singh, who have already pleaded guilty to the scheme.
The trove of documents assembled for the white-collar trial is said to be among the largest ever collected and includes financial records, spreadsheets, private messages and Google documents. Among the private messages was a stockpile of 750,000 pages of Slack messages from Wang’s laptop, which Bankman-Fried’s defense argues should be inadmissible due to only being discovered three days ago.
However, the defense is also arguing that the government should be barred from using any evidence produced by prosecutors after July 1. Bankman-Fried’s attorneys reason that without enough resources, they cannot review all the eleventh-hour productions given to them.
The prosecutors also outlined their plan to use Bankman-Fried’s political donations as further evidence of his alleged crimes. Texts sent by a former FTX executive to a family member indicate the purpose of the donations was to ‘weed out anti crypto dems for pro-crypto dems and anti-crypto repubs for pro-crypto repubs.’
The case against Bankman-Fried continues to raise eyebrows as prosecutors build their strategy intended to imprison the former billionaire. With the trial looming in October, it will remain to be seen if Bankman-Fried can withstand the surge of evidence pointing to his guilt.
