Prosecutors Detail Evidence Against Sam Bankman-Fried
Summary
Prosecutors in the criminal case against Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of the collapsed cryptocurrency exchange FTX, on Monday provided the most detailed account to date of the evidence they plan to use to convict him at trial in October. In a 70-page court filing, the prosecutors said they would draw on testimony from some of Mr. Bankman-Fried’s closest advisers, as well as an expert witness and other employees of FTX and Alameda Research, a crypto hedge fund he also founded. Mr. Bankman-Fried, a onetime crypto mogul who built FTX into one of the world’s largest virtual currency exchanges, was arrested in December and charged with orchestrating a sweeping scheme to use customer deposits to finance real estate purchases, charitable giving and donations to politicians. Over months of investigation, prosecutors have amassed millions of pages of evidence as they have prepared for Mr. Bankman-Fried’s trial, one of the largest troves ever collected in a white-collar securities fraud case brought by the federal authorities in Manhattan. The filing cited a text message that a high-ranking FTX executive, Ryan Salame, sent to a family member in November 2021, describing Mr. Bankman-Fried’s plans to use political donations to promote cryptocurrencies in Washington.