Ten months after Sam Bankman-Fried, founder of crypto exchange FTX and hedge fund Alameda Research, was arrested, the trial has started against the man whose billion-dollar empire collapsed in just a few days last year. Due to fraud, prosecutors suspect, customers and major investors lost enormous amounts of money. Bankman-Fried allegedly used billions from FTX customers for his own Alameda Research. In fact, he is said to have run a pyramid scheme and made billions out of it when it collapsed.
Bankman-Fried, who has long been considered a ‘respectable’ face of crypto trading, runs the risk of spending his entire life in jail. Several charges have been filed against him that could total more than a century in prison. Several acquaintances of Bankman-Fried will testify against him, including former lovers and friends.
It is also the biggest case the crypto world has seen so far. But it started on Tuesday in a remarkably banal way, like many American trials: with a screening of the jury. Bankman-Fried’s lawyers want to make sure there are no biased people on the jury. For example, people who were FTX customers themselves, or who have very strong opinions about Bankman-Fried.
Also read: Crypto entrepreneur Sam Bankman-Fried: a benefactor who squandered other people’s billions
Twelve will ultimately be chosen from a group of fifty potential jurors on Tuesday, and another six people will be put on the standby list. Judge Lewis Kaplan informed at least 22 candidates on Tuesday that they are not seeking election for personal or professional reasons.
Book Michael Lewis
Tuesday’s procedure did not take very long, but the selection may still be partly adjusted. In the case against Elisabeth Holmes, the founder of start-up Theranos, who was convicted of fraud, several jurors were replaced because they had already seen a documentary about the scandal.
In that light, writer Michael Lewis made a striking appeal to the jury this week: read my book. The famous author of, among other things, the filmed books Moneyball and The Big Short wrote the book published Tuesday Going Infinitewhich is about the fallen Bankman-Fried.
In an interview with the American news channel CBS, Lewis announces that he sees his new book, which has only been read by a select few, as “a letter to the jury”. According to Lewis, lawyers will tell two different stories on Tuesday and in the coming weeks that will cause a “war” in the courtroom. But, says Lewis, neither of the two stories “is as good as the one I have.”