SBF Trial, Day 2: DOJ: Sam Bankman-Fried ‘Lied’ His Way to ‘Wealth, Power, and Influence’

Transcript

[Music] hi everyone Laura here this is the Unchained recap for day two October 4th of the criminal trial of Sam bman freed the US Department of Justice started the criminal trial for Sam bman freed this Wednesday afternoon by declaring in its opening statement that Pinkman freed deliberately lied his way toward quote wealth power and influence allegedly stealing billions of dollars from thousands of individual people the defense team for bankman freed on the other hand described the former FTX CEO as quote a math nerd and a quote hard worker who acted in good faith and took reasonable business actions during his time as ftxs founder and

CEO the opening statements from both sides occurred on the second day of the trial following the finalization of the jury selection process earlier that morning bman Freed's trial also saw testimonies from a former FTX customer and a longtime friend of the defendant overall the prosecution's opening statement was cleaner and easier to follow using simple words such as lied or stole repeatedly in sentences like bankman freed quote was using his company FTX to commit fraud on a massive scale and the money he was spending to build his Empire it was money he was stealing from FTX his customers it even referred to Infamous tweets of spfs that he deleted as well as testimony to

Congress that contradicted what press utor alleged actually occurred at FTX the defenses opening which brought up terms like margin loans collateral and liquidity was harder to follow even for someone familiar with crypto and this case chosen jurors included numerous people with professional backgrounds far from Finance such as a retired corrections officer a trained conductor a social worker and a nurse the only juror with a financial background was a retired investment banker with a Stanford MBA however bankman Freed's attorney Mark Cohen also had some easier to follow moments in his opening he called his client Sam and said the government's portrait of him had been quote almost a

cartoon of a villain Cohen also used some simpler statements such as quote he was a math nerd who didn't drink or party the first witness called by the prosecution was Mark Antoine juliard an FTX customer who had lost roughly $150,000 worth of cryptocurrencies and F money he had deposited into or purchased on FTX he explained the due diligence he conducted before deciding to use FTX and how his research on bankman freed led him to have a picture of SPF that was quote wanting to do good towards the industry and giving access to customers retail investors like me juliard shared with the courtroom how on November 6th and 7th the days before ftxs insolvency

became public tweets by SPF stating that customer assets were safe assured juliard so that he didn't try to withdraw any of his funds the second person to testify was Adam yida who called himself a close friend of bman Freeds since their college days at MIT and who also worked at FTX as a software engineer at the time of its collapse and Alam research as a Trader prior to that yida said he had resigned immediately from FTX upon learning that Alam bankman Freed's crypto trading firm had used FTX customer deposits to repay Alam loans just before the trial closed for the day yida acknowledged he had been living with nine roommates one of whom was SPF

in a luxurious Penthouse in the Bahamas worth about $35 million the 31-year-old bankman freed currently faces seven felony charges ranging from wire fraud to conspiracy to commit money laundering the trial will resume tomorrow at 9:30 a.m. eastern time with a continuation of yia's testimony the government then stated that its next Witnesses this week will likely include Matt Wong co-founder and managing partner at Paradigm and Gary Wong former CTO of FTX Unchained will be back with more updates tomorrow