When Sam Bankman-Fried prepared to testify, the prosecutors stopped their case
Attorneys representing the United States Department of Justice dropped their charges against Sam “SBF” Bankman-Fried after more than three weeks of testimony from expert witnesses and former FTX and Alameda employees.
According to reports from the October 26 hearing, the last witness before the US government rested was FBI agent Mark Troino, who testified primarily about the SBF's involvement in more than 300 groups using the messaging app Signal. Following Toino's testimony, Bankman-Fried's attorneys moved to dismiss, which was quickly denied by Judge Lewis Kaplan.
SBF attorneys Mark Cohen and Christian Everdale presented two witnesses before Bankman-Fried. Bahamas-based Krystal Rolle previously represented the former FTX CEO, with SBF attending a meeting with the Bahamas Securities Commission in November 2022 to see him transfer FTX's assets to authorities.
Joseph Pimbley of litigation consulting firm PF2 Securities testified that he was paid more than $50,000 to extract information from Amazon Web Services along with FTX and about 9 to 11 million users of the crypto exchange. At the time of publication, Justice's withdrawal lawyers had not yet had a chance to question him.
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Based on the court report, Judge Kaplan's questions to Everdale or Cohen's witnesses were, “Isn't that relevant” and “Can we get to the point?” He pushed back several times. At the time of publication, Banman-Fried had not yet testified, but his attorneys said they would be waiting on the stand for four hours.
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Defense attorneys told Kaplan in an Oct. 25 conference call that Banman-Fried plans to testify as part of their case against the former FTX CEO. Prosecutors previously called former Alameda CEO Caroline Ellison, former FTX chief technology officer Gary Wang and former FTX director of engineering Nishad Singh to testify at SBF's request that Alameda use FTX funds.
Bankuman-Fried's trial is expected to end in a few business days with closing arguments and the judge considering any motions made by prosecutors or defense attorneys. However, the former FTX CEO is scheduled to face five additional criminal charges in a second trial expected to begin in March 2024. He pleaded not guilty to both charges.
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