US prosecutors said the fallen crypto king could have chosen to admit stealing billions of dollars of customers’ money, but he instead stayed silent.
| Fallen crypto king Sam Bankman-Fried had a choice to make – either “come clean” or keep “digging a deeper hole”. The FTX co-founder chose the latter, causing his cryptocurrency exchange to collapse in a massive fraud, prosecutors told a federal court.
While prosecutors allege Mr Bankman-Fried deliberately siphoned off FTX money to prop up his Alameda Research hedge fund, defence lawyers instead said the 31-year-old was an unconventional executive who made mistakes.Lawyer Mark Cohen took aim at the prosecutors in his closing statement, saying they had portrayed his client as a movie “villain” because “let’s face it, an awkward high school math nerd doesn’t look villainous”.
Mr Cohen said prosecutors had failed to link FTX’s collapse last November owing its 50 biggest creditor $US3.1 billion to criminal activity. “Bad risk management was not a crime,” he said. Mr Roos said after finding Alameda a new source of funding from FTX, he set up a secret system. “He was seemingly able to take billions out the back door. He set up a system for himself and a public system for everyone else.”
“He approached every question as if up was down and down was up”, Mr Roos said, pointing out that the defendant “couldn’t recall” more than 140 times, in response to questions on cross-examination.
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