Co-founder and former CEO of trading company Alameda Research and cryptocurrency exchange FTX, Sam Bankman-Fried, was convicted on all seven counts of fraud and money laundering.
According to a statement from the U.S. attorney’s office in the Southern District of New York, the defendant is “charged with a wide-ranging scheme to misappropriate billions of dollars of customer funds deposited with FTX and mislead investors and lenders to FTX and to Alameda Research.”
Following a five-week trial that probed extensively into the reasons for the collapse of one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges and its sibling trading company around a year ago, the ruling was rendered on Thursday. About eleven months ago, the 31-year-old Bankman-Fried was charged by the US Department of Justice.
The jury deliberated for around four hours before reaching a decision on six fraud counts and one money laundering offence.
Following the disclosure by CoinDesk in November 2022 of a flawed Alameda balance sheet, which caused panic and anxiety throughout the industry over FTX and its liquidity, Bankman-Fried rapidly dropped from the top of the cryptocurrency hierarchy.
Bankman-trial Fried Fried said that Alameda “borrowed” money from the exchange, not that he stole or defrauded FTX clients. The prosecution claimed that Bankman-Fried deceived thousands of investors on FTX, causing them to lose billions of dollars. They further said that despite numerous chances to be honest, he chose to be more deceptive.
The defendant faces a maximum sentence of 115 years in jail for all seven offences.
The U.S. Congress set the statutory maximum penalties for “informational purposes only,” since a judge will decide on the sentence after a guilty judgment, usually within 90 days.
