FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried pleads not guilty to fraud
NEW YORK –
FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried pleaded not responsible in Manhattan federal courtroom Tuesday to expenses that he cheated traders and looted buyer deposits on his cryptocurrency buying and selling platform as a decide set a tentative trial date for October.
Bankman-Fried, 30, is accused of illegally diverting large sums of buyer cash from FTX to make lavish actual property purchases, donate cash to politicians and make dangerous trades at Alameda Research, his cryptocurrency hedge fund buying and selling agency.
Bankman-Fried’s lawyer, Mark Cohen, introduced his shopper’s plea, saying: “He pleads not guilty to all counts.”
Afterward, Judge Lewis A. Kaplan set a tentative trial date of Oct. 2, saying he may transfer it ahead or backward a day or two.
Wearing a backpack, Bankman-Fried marched by a crush of cameras as he entered the courthouse on a wet day to make his first look earlier than Kaplan. After taking a plea in the course of the arraignment, Kaplan mentioned with attorneys a schedule for continuing towards a trial.
Kaplan determined that motions by the protection and responses to them by prosecutors can be due in April with an argument over the motions happening on May 18.
Prior to his look, his attorneys despatched a letter to the decide, saying Bankman-Fried’s mother and father in latest weeks have turn out to be the goal of “intense media scrutiny, harassment, and threats, including communications expressing a desire that they suffer physical harm.”
As a end result, the attorneys requested that the names be redacted on courtroom paperwork for the 2 people who had been lined as much as signal Bankman-Fried’s US$250 million private recognizance bond. Bankman-Fried was launched with digital monitoring about two weeks in the past on the situation that he await trial at his mother and father’ home in Palo Alto, Calif.
The decide invited prosecutors to answer the letter and stated he’ll rule at a later date.
Carolyn Ellison, 28, who ran Alameda, and Gary Wang, 29, who co-founded FTX, have pleaded responsible to fraud expenses and are cooperating with prosecutors in a bid for leniency. Both are free on bail.
Their pleas had been stored secret till Bankman-Fried was within the air after his extradition from the Bahamas, the place FTX relies, resulting from fears that he may flee.
Shortly earlier than Bankman-Fried’s arraignment, U.S. Attorney Damian Williams introduced that he was launching a activity pressure made up of senior prosecutors in his workplace to research and prosecute issues associated to the FTX collapse. He stated the duty pressure additionally will work to hint and get better sufferer belongings.
“The Southern District of New York is working around the clock to respond to the implosion of FTX,” Williams stated in a press launch. “It is an all-hands-on-deck moment. We are launching the SDNY FTX Task Force to ensure that this urgent work continues, powered by all of SDNY’s resources and expertise, until justice is done.”
