Financial entrepreneur Sam Bankman-Fried, commonly known as SBF, was convicted on seven charges of fraud and conspiracy following the collapse of his cryptocurrency exchange FTX in November 2022.

[2] The trial and conviction of Bankman-Fried was one of the most notorious cases of white-collar crime in the United States and raised awareness within the business community over criminal activity in the cryptocurrency market.

He was released on a $250 million bond[15] until August 11, 2023, at which point he was remanded into custody at the Metropolitan Detention Center, Brooklyn, following accusations of witness tampering.

[16] A second trial was scheduled for March 2024, at which Bankman-Fried would have faced a further five charges, including an alleged $40 million bribe to Chinese authorities to unlock $1 billion of Alameda's trading funds.

[19] In the October 2023 trial, Bankman-Fried faced seven charges brought by the U.S. Department of Justice:[20] The indictment claimed that the scheme began in 2019 and involved lying to Alameda's lenders, as well as to FTX investors and customers.

[27] The trial began on October 3, 2023, in the Daniel Patrick Moynihan United States Courthouse in Manhattan, New York City, with district judge Lewis Kaplan presiding.

Drawing attention to another part of the terms of service, the defense argued that as a customer engaged in margin trading, Alameda was allowed to borrow money from FTX.

[29][30] The overall picture painted by the prosecution was of an accumulation of wealth and power "built on lies", while the defense declared, "It's not a crime to be the CEO of a company that later files for bankruptcy".

[32] Ellison, who has pleaded guilty to seven counts of fraud and conspiracy as part of a cooperation deal with prosecutors, told the court that she had sent "dishonest" balance sheets to these lenders to conceal the taking of customer funds.

[35] Ellison testified that Bankman-Fried had blamed her "loudly and strongly" for Alameda's precarious financial position and she admitted that she should have hedged its portfolio as he had suggested, although he had been the one "who chose to make all the investments".

[37] Gary Wang, a long-time friend of Bankman-Fried's and FTX's former chief technology officer, also has a plea deal with the government and is hoping to serve no jail time.

[46][47] Singh recounted how Bankman-Fried had "profligately" spent "huge sums of money" on investments, campaign donations, celebrity endorsements, and real estate.

[52] Then in November 2022, feeling "suicidal" as the crisis intensified, Singh proposed backdating a trade to write off some of his own debt, to which Bankman-Fried replied, "I think that's probably fine".

The court were shown a message exchange from around the same time in which Singh said to Bankman-Fried, "this is wildly selfish of me, but [FTX lawyers] may need to know that it wasn't a ton of people orchestrating it.

[56] Other witnesses for the prosecution included FTX customer Marc-Antoine Julliard, FTX general counsel Can Sun, Alameda software engineer Christian Drappi, BlockFi CEO Zac Prince, angel investor Matt Huang, accounting professor Peter Easton, investigative analyst Shamel Medrano, FBI agent Marc Troiano, Eliora Katz, and Cory Gaddis.

[57][58][59][60][d] There was speculation on whether Bankman-Fried would testify, since his attorneys argued that the restrictions on his prescribed medication for ADHD while in jail ostensibly hindered his ability to "meaningfully participate" in the trial.

However, the company's rapid growth put strain on the system and eventually a major glitch led to the exchange shutting down for an hour while the error was fixed.

[63] But as well as pandemic prevention and other non-business issues, he spoke to members of Congress about cryptocurrency regulation (he'd started a small, separate, U.S.-based exchange) and admitted that a minority of his political donations were related to FTX's business.

[60] The court heard of Alameda's origins as a trading firm staffed in part by members of the effective altruism movement, which advocates earning as much money as possible in order to give it to charity.

He became the face of the company by "accident at first"—he was "somewhat introverted"—but after some initial hesitancy about a big marketing push, he ultimately found it effective overall in putting FTX on the map.

It was still turning a profit trading, but potential recruits had generally been "going to FTX instead" causing the culture to decline, and management's failure to hedge had cost it 75% of its NAV.

In October or November 2022, Bankman-Fried finally gained access to the relevant database and—contrary to the prosecution's story—he claimed it was only then that he knew Alameda owed FTX a total of $10 billion.

She testified that the day after FTX declared bankruptcy, Bahamian authorities ordered Bankman-Fried to transfer remaining assets to the Securities Commission of the Bahamas and that he had cooperated.

[30][59] Under oath, but without the presence of the jury, Bankman-Fried described how internal lawyers and outside counsel Fenwick & West had been involved in various key decisions at the heart of the case.

Bankman-Fried said that he did not consider Ellison's seven drafts of an Alameda balance sheet to be formal business documentation and that business-related spreadsheets were informally shared with lawyers over Signal.

Among them was English barrister Lawrence Akka, who was to testify that FTX's terms of service "did not contain a declaration of trust over any fiat currency, but gave rise only to a contractual creditor-debtor relationship".

[78] The prosecution told the jury that FTX was "a pyramid of deceit built by the defendant on a foundation of lies and false promises, all to get money", and which left "countless victims in its wake" after its collapse.

Defense lawyer Mark Cohen argued that because the prosecution had no real proof, they had resorted to bullying, talking about Bankman-Fried's sex life and appearance in an effort to get the jury to dislike him.

This case should send a clear message to anyone who tries to hide their crimes behind a shiny new thing they claim no one else is smart enough to understand: the Justice Department will hold you accountable.

"[87] A new trial of Bankman-Fried was scheduled to begin on March 11, 2024, at the same court with five counts cited, including bank fraud and the bribery of Chinese officials, after the prosecution's request to have some of their charges tried separately was granted in June 2023 by a U.S.