The jury returned a verdict of guilty on all seven counts in the trial of Sam Bankman-Fried.
“Mr. Bankman-Fried. Please rise and face the jury,” Judge Lewis A. Kaplan commanded just before a jury forewoman responded “guilty” seven times to two counts of wire fraud, two counts of wire fraud conspiracy and three other conspiracy charges, which carry potential penalties adding up to 110 years in prison. Bankman-Fried is likely to face far less than the maximum at a sentencing set for March 28.
Given the complexity of the entire cryptocurrency enterprise that few understand, there was the possibility that the jurors might be overwhelmed. The defense indeed emphasized that it was so complex that even their client was out of his depth and did not know what was going on and did not have the intent to defraud.
However, the prosecution decided to treat the whole cryptocurrency part as just a black box whose details were largely irrelevant. What they focused on was common-or-garden fraud, whereby SBF took the money of investors and diverted it for his personal use, including a lavish lifestyle.
U.S. Attorney Damian Williams, who sat in the front row of the spectator section during the verdict, stood before cameras outside the courthouse and said Bankman-Fried “perpetrated one of the biggest financial frauds in American history, a multibillion dollar scheme designed to make him the king of crypto.”
“But here’s the thing: The cryptocurrency industry might be new. The players like Sam Bankman-Fried might be new. This kind of fraud, this kind of corruption is as old as time and we have no patience for it,” he said.
He said the case should serve as a warning to every other fraudster who “thinks they’re untouchable, that their crimes are too complex,” that they are too powerful to prosecute or can talk their way out of their crimes because “I promise we’ll have enough handcuffs for all of them.”
That kind of fraud is easy to understand and the jury provided a verdict very quickly after just a few hours.
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha [gasp] hahahahahahahahahaha…
I’ve been following this affair pretty closely, and it’s been comedy gold the whole way -- as long as you don’t think about the poor suckers who lost their life savings to it.
That’s for this particular trial. More to come.
“Bankman-Fried is scheduled to stand trial in March on charges of paying a $40 million bribe to Chinese officials and conspiring to make more than 300 illegal political donations in the U.S.”
(https://www.reuters.com/legal/sam-bankman-frieds-conviction-whats-next-2023-11-03/)
Hm. Good.
Good.
John Morales @2
Thank you for the link. It does seem extraordinary that sentencing won’t be until next March, I do appreciate that he is already in prison because of the witness tampering, but even so nearly five months is a long time. And it looks like more trouble coming down the line.
Many people don’t realize it, but SBF probably had a hand in screwing over the political process in their area of the US. Right here, he bankrolled the most conservative candidate running for congress during the Democratic primary (to the tune of somewhere between 0.5 and 1 million USD, that we know about), a candidate who was thought to be the least likely of the Dems to do anything about crypto, as well as the crypto mining farms. Unsurprisingly, he lost the general election and we have a Repub in office now.
I discovered his involvement during the primary and told everyone I could. Nobody had heard of him (I hadn’t either, prior to this). One of the candidates tried to bring this to the front but people were mostly “Huh?”.
jimf @#5.
Which district are you referring to?
NY-22. Prior to the Dem primary, I was receiving glossy mailers for SBF’s “chosen one” weekly. After the primary, not a single thing. Like I said, he had no interest in supporting this person in the general election. He just wanted the most conservative candidate to win the Dem primary. I traced down SBF via the PAC that was sending out the mailers as I had never heard of it. I have also read that SBF gave large donations to Repubs via dark money PACs. IOW, the Dems he supported in daylight, but what he really wanted he hid in the dark.
Consequently, our current rep is a sniveling MAGAt named Brandon Williams. A real piece of work, that one is.
Crypto was irrelevant to the fraud scheme. Sam had control over both the exchange (FTX) and a trading firm on that exchange (Alameda Research), and embezzled customer assets from GTX for Alameda to trade with.
Doesn’t matter how complicated or out of his depth he was, or any excuse he tried to cpme up with. He took what wasn’t his to take, and that’s easy to see as a crime.