The former darling of cryptocurrencies Sam Bankman-Fried knowingly “stole” the money of clients of his FTX platform, the prosecution said on Wednesday during its indictment in a New York court.
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“What happened does not involve complex issues related to cryptocurrencies,” said Nicolas Roos, representative of Manhattan federal prosecutor Damian Williams. “It’s about deception, lies, theft, greed.”
Sam Bankman-Fried is on trial in New York for using, without their knowledge, funds deposited by customers on his cryptocurrency exchange platform FTX, which went bankrupt in November 2022. He faces up to 110 years in prison in the event of conviction.
Up to $14 billion fueled the risky transactions and investments of his investment company Alameda Research.
“One of the questions (to which the jury must answer) is to determine whether he knew that taking this money was wrong,” explained Nicolas Roos.
“He knew it. He still did it,” insisted the representative of the public prosecutor. “He thought that because he was smart, he could get away with it.”
To exonerate the accused, “you would have to believe that he understood nothing” of what was happening within his own companies, according to the prosecutor’s representative. “You have followed this entire trial and you know that none of this is true,” he insisted.
During the hearings of this trial which began on October 3, Sam Bankman-Fried admitted to having made “big mistakes” in his management but he always denied having broken the law. He notably explained during his testimony a few days ago that he was only informed very late of Alameda’s financial situation. He also assured that he had given instructions – not followed, according to him – to manage the risks taken by Alameda.
Nicolas Roos recalled that three witnesses, former close collaborators of “SBF”, had all affirmed that the former little genius of cryptocurrencies had given directives so that Alameda could use, almost without limits, in the pockets of clients of FTX.
“It’s a fraud,” said Nicolas Roos. “It’s theft, pure and simple.”
Alameda was authorized to borrow up to $65 billion from FTX.
In the spring of 2022, the cryptocurrency industry was rocked by a series of failures, which caused the value of almost all digital currencies and that of Alameda’s assets to plummet.
According to the Manhattan federal prosecutor’s office, at the time of the bankruptcy of FTX, the second largest cryptocurrency exchange in the world at the time, a little more than eight billion dollars belonging to customers were missing.