{"id":9107,"date":"2023-11-03T13:01:52","date_gmt":"2023-11-03T13:01:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/infundpros.com\/business\/the-5-wildest-moments-from-the-sam-bankman-fried-trial\/"},"modified":"2023-11-03T13:01:52","modified_gmt":"2023-11-03T13:01:52","slug":"the-5-wildest-moments-from-the-sam-bankman-fried-trial","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/infundpros.com\/?p=9107","title":{"rendered":"The 5 wildest moments from the Sam Bankman-Fried trial"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\n Sam Bankman-Fried was found guilty Thursday following a monthlong trial that was almost as wild as the rapid rise and fall of cryptocurrency exchange FTX itself.\n <\/p>\n

\n He was\u00a0found guilty\u00a0of stealing billions of dollars from accounts belonging to customers of FTX. He was also found guilty of defrauding lenders to FTX\u2019s sister company, the hedge fund Alameda Research, which held FTX customer funds in a bank account.\n <\/p>\n

\n Other charges he was found guilty of include defrauding investors in FTX and a money-laundering charge.\n <\/p>\n

\n The verdict caps a\u00a0yearlong saga\u00a0that took the 31-year-old Bankman-Fried from a billionaire living in a luxury apartment in the Bahamas to a defendant in one of the biggest white-collar crime cases since Bernie Madoff\u2019s Ponzi scheme that fell apart in 2009.\n <\/p>\n

\n The sentencing hearing date will be in March 2024. He faces up to 110 years in prison.\n <\/p>\n

\n During the trial, Bankman-Fried took the unusual \u2013 and risky \u2013 decision to testify in his own defense. Here\u2019s some of the wildest moments.\n <\/p>\n

\n His hair and shorts \u2026 and presidential aspirations
\n<\/h2>\n

\n His casual wardrobe and wild, curly hair were subjects of discussion in court.\n <\/p>\n

\n After Caroline Ellison, SBF\u2019s ex-girlfriend and the former CEO of Alameda Research,\u00a0testified earlier in the trial\u00a0that Bankman-Fried\u2019s style was part of a marketing strategy to look like an eccentric\u00a0startup founder, SBF\u2019s lead attorney Mark Cohen sought to undermine that.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cWhy did you\u00a0wear the shorts\u00a0and T-shirts?\u201d Cohen asked.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cI found them comfortable,\u201d Bankman-Fried replied.\n <\/p>\n

\n Cohen also asked about the hair.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cI was kind of busy and lazy and didn\u2019t bother getting a haircut for long periods of time,\u201d Bankman-Fried said.\n <\/p>\n

\n Overall, SBF said he never intended to be the public face of FTX. It was \u201can accident\u201d at first, he told the court.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cI hadn\u2019t intended to be a public face of anything,\u201d he said, adding that he is \u201csomewhat introverted.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n Still, Ellison testified that Bankman-Fried told her he believed he had about a 5% chance of becoming president of the United States.\n <\/p>\n

\n When shopping for an arena with which FTX could launch a brand partnership, Bankman-Fried testified Friday that his company had talks with a few different sports venues.\n <\/p>\n

\n Eventually, they settled on the home of the Miami Heat, in what was\u00a0reported\u00a0to be a\u00a0$135 million, 19-year deal, renaming the American Airlines Arena as FTX Arena.\n <\/p>\n

\n Venues that didn\u2019t work out at the time included football stadiums for the New Orleans Saints and the Kansas City Chiefs, as well as the Kansas City Royals\u2019 baseball stadium.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cNo offense to the Kansas City Royals, but we didn\u2019t want to be known as the Kansas City Royals of crypto exchanges,\u201d SBF testified.\n <\/p>\n

\n The FTX Arena was later\u00a0renamed the Kaseya Center,\u00a0following the company\u2019s collapse last fall.\n <\/p>\n

\n Judge Lewis Kaplan expressed exasperation with some of Bankman-Fried\u2019s meandering answers, noting during one point of the trial that the \u201cwitness has what I\u2019ll simply call an interesting way of responding to questions.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n When questioned by his own attorneys, Bankman-Fried appeared confident and upbeat. But he grew increasingly agitated when grilled by prosecutors.\n <\/p>\n

\n SBF sometimes would give vague\u00a0answers in which he said he was \u201cnot entirely sure\u201d or didn\u2019t recall past conversations about company policies and meetings with lawyers.\n <\/p>\n

\n At one point, Kaplan interjected, urging Bankman-Fried to\u00a0\u201clisten to the question, and answer the question directly.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n In response to questions from Assistant US Attorney Danielle Sassoon, Bankman-Fried said, variously: \u201cI am giving you my best guess at answering the question. \u2026 I am going to answer what I think the question you are asking is, but I apologize if I\u2019m answering the wrong question\u201d and \u201cI wouldn\u2019t phrase it that way. But I think that the answer to the question I understand you to be trying to ask is \u2018yes.\u2019\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n While Bankman-Fried publicly advocated for crypto regulation, Sassoon suggested that this support was \u201cjust for PR.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cNo.\u201d Bankman-Fried replied.\n <\/p>\n

\n Sassoon then referenced an exchange SBF had with a reporter in which he said \u201cf*ck regulators\u201d and that his advocacy was \u201cjust PR.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n Another private conversation showed SBF calling some customers \u201cdumb m*therf**kers.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n SBF pushed back on the question, saying that comment referred only to a \u201cspecific subset\u201d of customers.\n <\/p>\n

\n Perhaps the wildest moment involved \u201cThai prostitutes.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n Although Bankman-Fried didn\u2019t face bribery charges in his trial, Ellison was allowed to testify at one point about an instance when she believes he ordered Alameda Research, a hedge-fund-like crypto trading house that Bankman-Fried launched in 2017, to wire \u201cin the ballpark of $100 million\u201d to two crypto wallets in China.\n <\/p>\n

\n She said she believed the funds were a bribe to get Chinese officials to unfreeze two crypto trading accounts worth about $1 billion that Alameda held in in the country.\n <\/p>\n

\n She described the payments as a last resort after other tactics to move the funds out had failed. One of those failed schemes, she said, involved using accounts belonging to \u201cThai prostitutes\u201d to set up trades that would drain Alameda\u2019s China accounts and transfer value to the sex workers\u2019 accounts, where Alameda could reclaim them.\n <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

Read the full article here<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sam Bankman-Fried was found guilty Thursday following a monthlong trial that was almost as wild as the rapid rise and fall of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9108,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-9107","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business"},"yoast_head":"\nThe 5 wildest moments from the Sam Bankman-Fried trial | inFundPros<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Sam Bankman-Fried was found guilty Thursday following a monthlong trial that was almost as wild as the rapid rise and fall of cryptocurrency exchange FTX\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/infundpros.com\/?p=9107\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" 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