FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried leaves Manhattan federal court, Tuesday, Jan. 3, 2023, in New York, after he pleaded not guilty to charges that he cheated investors and looted customer deposits on his cryptocurrency trading platform. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
By Ken Sweet and Larry Neumeister
A prosecutor opened a criminal fraud trial Wednesday by telling jurors that FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried was on top of the world a year ago, hobnobbing with people like football star Tom Brady and ex-President Bill Clinton, before his historic fraud was exposed, leaving customers and investors without at least $10 billion they thought was secure.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Nathan Rehn pointed at Bankman-Fried, sitting with his lawyers in a suit, and accused him of “committing a massive fraud.”
He said Bankman-Fried told lies to his investors while he spent their money on himself, his friends and family, buying lavish homes and spending millions of dollars on political donations to gain influence in Washington.
Bankman-Fried, 31, maintains he was not to blame for a massive fraud that prosecutors allege in seven charges, including wire fraud and conspiracy, brought against him since his arrest last December in the Bahamas. In court Wednesday, he sat with a water bottle and a laptop computer in front of him.
They say the California man defrauded thousands of investors and customers in his businesses of billions of dollars by siphoning off their money for his own uses, including financing his businesses and making big political contributions to try to influence government regulation of cryptocurrency.
Defense lawyers insist their client had no criminal intent as he became famous in the crypto world while growing FTX and a related business, Alameda Research, into multibillion dollar heavyweights in the cryptocurrency industry.
Seated in the first row at the trial was U.S. Attorney Damian Williams, who said months ago that the fraud surrounding FTX was one of the biggest in U.S. history.
Bankman-Fried became a target of investigators when FTX collapsed last November amid a rush of customers seeking to recover their deposits, less than a year after Bankman-Fried spent millions of dollars on the 2022 Super Bowl with celebrity advertisements promoting FTX as the “safest and easiest way to buy and sell crypto.”
Comedian Larry David, along with other celebrities such as Brady and basketball star Stephen Curry, have been named in a lawsuit that argued their celebrity status made them culpable for promoting the firm’s failed business model.
Bankman-Fried was extradited to the United States from the Bahamas after his arrest last December.
He was first ordered to remain at home with his parents in Palo Alto, California, as part of a $250 million bail package, but his bond was revoked and he was jailed in August after Judge Lewis A. Kaplan concluded he’d tried to influence trial witnesses.
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