Sam Bankman-Fried Found Guilty on All 7 Counts in FTX Fraud Trial

Former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried was found guilty on all seven counts by a jury at his criminal trial in New York after about four hours of deliberations.

Bankman-Fried was convicted of two counts of wire fraud, two counts of wire fraud conspiracy, one count of securities fraud, one count of commodity fraud conspiracy and one count of money laundering conspiracy.

He will return to court for sentencing by New York District Judge Lewis Kaplan on March 28, 2024. Government prosecutors will recommend a sentence, but Judge Kaplan will have the final say.

Bankman-Fried’s crimes each carry a maximum sentence of 5 to 20 years in prison, with wire fraud, wire fraud conspiracy and money laundering conspiracy carrying a maximum sentence of 20 years.

In a courtroom press conference, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Damian Williams called Bankman-Fried’s crimes “a multibillion-dollar scheme designed to make him the king of crypto » and one of the largest financial frauds in American history.

Other key FTX executives, including former Alameda CEO Caroline Ellison, FTX co-founder Gary Wang, and former FTX Director of Engineering Nishad Singh, have all pleaded guilty to various charges and have worked with the government to testify against Bankman-Fried during the five-week trial.

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Bankman-Fried had pleaded not guilty to all charges and during his trial he took the stand to maintain his innocence and call FTX’s November 2022 collapse “several big mistakes.”

He has denied any wrongdoing in the relationship between FTX and Alameda and attempted to distance himself from key decisions.

Bankman-Fried blamed Wang for creating a function for Alameda to trade funds on FTX that it didn’t have and claimed he “wasn’t entirely sure what was going on.” had passed” with Alameda’s credit line, which reached billions in 2017. crypto market collapse of 2022.

In his testimony, he also criticized Ellison for not focusing on risk management and did not believe he defrauded FTX clients by taking more than $8 billion of their funds. Instead, he presented it as Alameda borrowing from the stock market.

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Additional reporting by Ana Paula Pereira.