The former golden boy of the crypto industry, Sam Bankman-Fried, was found guilty of six counts of embezzlement and one count of money laundering.
Even before the summer of 2022, Sam Bankman-Fried, 31, was considered the prodigy of the crypto world. This is partly why the revelation of abuses came as a shock to many. Barry Williams, ZumaWire / MVPHOTOS
Founder and former CEO of crypto exchange FTX and its sister company, investment company Alameda Research Sam Bankman-Fried has been found guilty of all seven charges brought against him.
A New York jury found Bankman-Fried guilty of six counts of embezzlement and one count of money laundering. In total, the convictions can lead to a maximum of 115 years in prison.
Among other things, he writes about the verdict TechCrunch.
Bankman-Fried is accused of fraudulently and systematically embezzling funds from FTX clients to Alameda Research. In total, the amount was up to eight billion dollars.
In her defense speech, Bankman-Fried said that FTX had not embezzled its clients’ investments, but that Alameda Research had borrowed funds from FTX.
The murky accounting of FTX initially came to light in the fall of 2022, when the murky financial relationships of FTX and Alameda Research began to be discussed in the media. CoinDesk, a crypto site, then revealed that the majority of Alameda Research’s assets actually consisted of FTX’s own ftt crypto-coin.
The revelation sent market confidence plummeting and the value of ftt collapsed, plunging Bankman-Fried’s companies into a cash crisis. For a while, the crypto market leader Binance considered buying FTX, which suffered from a cash crisis, but pcame to terms with his intentions after familiarizing himself with its accounting. FTX filed for bankruptcy during November.
Charges were brought against Bankman-Fried in December 2022. The trial has been phased and colorful due to, among other things, Bankman-Fried’s own behavior; he has been accused, for example, of manipulating witnesses.
FTX itself is too sued its founder accusing them of using the bankrupt company’s money for, for example, luxury apartments and political lobbying during the summer of 2022, even though they knew the company was insolvent at that time.