FTX Founder Sam Bankman-Fried leaves Manhattan Federal Court after a courtroom look on June 15, 2023 in New York City.
Michael M. Santiago | Getty Images
A jury has found Sam Bankman-Fried guilty of all seven criminal counts towards him. The former FTX CEO faces a most sentence of 115 years in jail.
Bankman-Fried, the 31-year outdated son of two Stanford authorized students and graduate of Massachusetts Institute of Technology, had pleaded not guilty to costs together with wire fraud, securities fraud and cash laundering tied to the collapse late final yr of crypto change FTX and sister hedge fund Alameda Research.
The jury returned a swift verdict after receiving the case at round 3:15 p.m. on Thursday.
The trial, which started in early October, pitted the testimony of Bankman-Fried’s former shut buddies and high lieutenants towards the sworn statements of their former boss and ex-roomate.
The authorities’s key witnesses included Caroline Ellison, Bankman-Fried’s ex-girlfriend and the previous head of Alameda, and FTX co-founder Gary Wang, who was Bankman-Fried’s childhood pal from math camp. Both pleaded guilty in December to a number of costs and cooperated as witnesses for the prosecution.
The central query for jurors to contemplate was whether or not Bankman-Fried acted with criminal intent in taking buyer funds from FTX and utilizing that cash to pay for actual property, enterprise investments, company sponsorships, political donations and to cowl losses at Alameda.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Nicolas Roos advised the courtroom in his closing argument on Wednesday, there was “no critical dispute” that $10 billion in buyer cash that was sitting in FTX’s crypto change went lacking. The challenge, he mentioned, is whether or not Bankman-Fried knew that taking the cash was unsuitable.
“The defendant schemed and lied to get cash, which he spent,” Roos mentioned.
In the absence of a profitable enchantment, Bankman-Fried now awaits sentencing. His case has been in comparison with that of Elizabeth Holmes, the founding father of medical machine firm Theranos, which ceased operations in 2018.
Holmes, 39, was convicted in early 2022 on 4 counts of defrauding traders in Theranos after testifying in her personal protection. She was sentenced to greater than 11 years in jail, and began serving her punishment in May at a minimum-security facility in Bryan, Texas.
— CNBC’s Dawn Giel contributed to this report