Sam Bankman-Fried found guilty on all 7 charges in FTX fraud trial

Former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried was found guilty of seven charges after a four-hour trial in New York.

Bankman-Fried was found guilty of two felony counts.

New York District Judge Louis Kaplan will return to court for sentencing on March 28, 2024. Judge Kaplan has the final say, even if state prosecutors make a sentencing proposal.

The Bankman-Fried crimes each carry a sentence of 5 to 20 years in prison for the wire fraud, wire fraud and money laundering counts.

In a press conference outside the courthouse, Damian Williams, US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, called Bankman-Fried's crimes “a multi-billion dollar scheme designed to make crypto kingpins” and one of the biggest money laundering schemes in US history.

Bankman-Fried's attorney, Mark Cohen, said in a statement: “We respect the jury's decision. But we are deeply disappointed by the outcome. Mr. Bankman-Fried maintains his innocence and will vigorously fight the charges against him.”

A statement from the Sam Bankman-Fried Group –

“We respect the judges' decision. But we are very disappointed with the result. Mr. Bankman Freed maintains his innocence and will continue to vigorously fight the charges against him.” pic.twitter.com/Q69w6nKB34

— Teddy Schleifer (@teddyschleifer) November 3, 2023

Other key FTX executives, including former Alameda CEO Caroline Ellison, FTX founder Gary Wang and former FTX head of engineering Nishad Singh, have pleaded guilty to various charges and testified with the government during Bankman-Fried's five-week trial.

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Bankman-Fried has pleaded not guilty to all charges and has maintained his innocence during his trial and characterized the FTX November 2022 collapse as one of “several big mistakes”.

He maintained that he did nothing wrong in his dealings with Alameda at FTX and tried to distance himself from major decisions.

Banman-Fried blamed Wang for creating a function that allowed Alameda to trade money on FTX and said he was “not entirely sure what happened” to Alameda's line of credit. The 2022 crypto market is collapsing.

In his testimony, he criticized Ellison for not focusing on risk management and did not believe he had defrauded FTX customers of more than $8 billion of their money, instead framing Alameda as having borrowed from the exchange.

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Additional reporting by Ana Paula Pereira.