Sam Bankman-Fried Trial: Here's Everything That Happened So Far

Transcript

Sam bankman Freed's criminal trial is officially underway the 31-year-old former FTX CEO is accused of committing wire fraud and conspiracy to commit other types of fraud he is pleaded not guilty and may face a lengthy jail sentence the Whirlwind first week saw jury selections evocative opening statements from the defense and prosecution and Powerful witness testimonies that offered contrasting pictures of s bankman freed and why his powerful crypto Empire came crashing down here are the key things that have happened in the trial so far the mppy haired SPF as he's also called showed up in court noticeably more kempt sporting shorter hair and a suit judge Lewis Kaplan who has overseen a number of

high-profile cases selected 12 jurors including a physician's assistant a librarian a nurse and a retired investment banker during the selection process potential jurors were asked about their knowledge of FTX and cryptocurrency one potential juror said quote I still don't understand how it works to which judge Kaplan responded you probably have a lot of company in this court prosecutor th Ren and defense lawyer Mark Cohen delivered opening statements painting different pictures of Sam bankman freed for the jury Ren said bankman freed deliberately lied his way towards wealth power and influence fueled by billions of dollars in customer funds Cohen rejected that depiction saying it portrayed SPF as a

cartoon of a villain in his words SPF was a math nerd who didn't drink or party and that FTX collapsed due to a perfect storm of Misfortune that rocked The Wider crypto industry quote it's not a crime to be the CEO of a company that later files for bankruptcy it's not a crime to run a business in good faith that winds up going through a storm the first witness Mark Antoine juliard was a cocoa bean Trader who said he lost over $100,000 with FTX in his testimony he said that he like many others believed that there were strong financials behind the company the second witness Adam yida was a software developer at FDX and said he

once lived with s SPF in a $35 million apartment in the Bahamas according to his testimony yedidya became aware of a bug in ftxs code base that overstated how much money sister company alamer research owed FTX he shared his concerns about the large debt owed by Alam to FTX with SPF saying are things okay to which Sam is alleged to have responded we were bulletproof last year but were not bulletproof this year in his testimony yedidia bluntly said quote FTX defrauded all of its customers which left the courtroom silent Matt hang co-founder of crypto investment firm Paradigm

testified that the VC firm expressed concern about the lack of traditional corporate governance structures at FTX pointing at Sam as the Kingpin Gary Wong the co-founder of alom research and FTX began his testimony by declaring that he had pleaded guilty to committing crimes including wire fraud Securities fraud and commodities fraud he added that he conspired with bankman freed former FTX director of engineering nishad Singh and Elam CEO Caroline Ellison he said that SBF directed him to place code inside of FTX software quote we gave special privileges to Alam research on FTX which allowed it to withdraw unlimited amounts

of funds from the platform and we lied about this to the public he also said that Alam had a credit line of $65 billion far higher than larger market makers most damningly Wong said that funds Elam was withdrawing came from customer deposits the next witness to testify will be Caroline Ellison whether Sam bankman freed testifies a decision that he alone can make remains unclear the trial is expected to last about 6 weeks keep an eye on Unchained coverage of the trial we will be sharing updates on all of our platforms thanks for watching