In this courtroom sketch, FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried, right, is cross examined by Assistant U.S. Attorney Danielle Sassoon, left, while Judge Lewis Kaplan listens, center, in Manhattan federal court, Monday, Oct. 30, 2023, in New York. (Elizabeth Williams via AP)
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For someone so obsessed with expected value calculations, Sam Bankman-Fried has proven to be astonishingly inept.
The prosecutors say he gambled with FTX customers’ money in his own casino. He clearly gambled on not being caught. He gambled that his own testimony would miraculously clear him of a mountain of damning evidence.
The month-long criminal trial in a NYC federal court of the FTX founder, accused of multiple counts of fraud and money laundering through his crypto empire, is now awaiting a jury verdict, expected either later today or Monday. If you believe the chorus of legal experts who have been commenting on the case, the only remaining question is not whether Bankman-Fried will be found guilty, but how stiff a sentence he will get. The 31-year-old former crypto mogul faces up to 115 years in prison if convicted on all charges.
“He tried to trick the customers, then tried to destroy evidence. He made false statements to the press. He thought he would never be caught. He went on Good Morning America for the same reason he sent a confident tweet thread. Don’t fall for it. You. Know. Better,” U.S. Assistant Attorney Danielle Sassoon pleaded to the jury in a rebuttal to closing arguments on Thursday morning, according to an Inner City Press report.
In closing arguments Wednesday, prosecutor Nicholas Roos emphasized the abundance of documentary and testimonial evidence, which, he asserted, proved that Bankman-Fried knew he was embezzling customer funds from FTX and that it was wrong.
“You would have to believe that the defendant, who graduated from MIT, who ran two billion-dollar companies and who was testifying in Congress, was actually clueless,” Roos argued.
He pointed to the contrast between Bankman-Fried’s fluency in responding to questions from his own lawyers and his evasiveness in cross-examination—there were 140 instances in which Bankman-Fried had said he couldn’t recall the answer to a question, according to Roos.
Defense attorney Mark Cohen said the prosecution was trying to paint his client as a movie villain. “In the real world, unlike the movie world, things can get messy,” said Cohen, though messy may not be a fitting term for the $16 billion in customer claims filed against FTX since its collapse last November.
To the observers in the courtroom, Bankman-Fried’s defense appeared to boil down to “he is a nice boy who would never do anything to hurt anyone on purpose.” The “I screwed up” defense might have worked in front of his counselors at a math camp or his professors at MIT, not in a federal court when billions are at stake.
As Cohen finished his closing arguments, Bankman-Fried looked like he might cry.
