Sam Bankman-Fried will probably take the stand on Thursday in his own criminal fraud trial in an attempt to win over the jury after weeks of damning testimony by the prosecution’s witnesses.
The defense attorney Mark Cohen made the surprise announcement on Wednesday morning that the disgraced crypto mogul would testify in Manhattan federal court. Bankman-Fried, 31, was the CEO of the bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange FTX, which collapsed as the cryptocurrency industry crashed in late 2022. Cohen said the defense plans to call three brief witnesses before Bankman-Fried takes the stand.
Prosecutors have accused Bankman-Fried of pillaging FTX for his own high-flying ends. He faces seven counts of wire fraud and conspiracy to launder money, felony charges that could carry sentences of decades in prison if he is convicted. He has pleaded not guilty to the allegations that he stole FTX customers’ funds and used them for a $40m Bahamas penthouse, A-list celebrity endorsements and $100m in political contributions.
Prosecutors called their final planned witness, the FBI agent Marc Troiano, when the trial resumed on Thursday morning in federal court in Manhattan after a week-long break.
Federal prosecutors made a star witness of Caroline Ellison, Bankman-Fried’s former girlfriend and the CEO of Alameda Research, a hedge fund closely associated with FTX, through which Bankman-Fried allegedly funneled FTX customers’ cash. Ellison testified that Bankman-Fried masterminded billions of dollars in fraud, that his disheveled boy genius appearance was a carefully curated facade, and that her difficult personal relationship with him poisoned the businesses they ran together.
Ellison and Gary Wang, a co-founder of FTX, have pleaded guilty in agreements with federal prosecutors to wire, securities and commodities fraud. Like Ellison, Wang testified against Bankman-Fried, saying that his former colleague was not surprised to hear about an $8bn hole in FTX’s balance sheet. Both Ellison and Wang testified that Bankman-Fried directed them to commit crimes.
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The decision to testify echoes Bankman-Fried’s media tour in the wake of the collapse of FTX. He was asked in November 2022 during his first interview after the exchange evaporated: “Are your lawyers suggesting it’s a good idea for you to be speaking?” Bankman-Fried answered: “No, they are very much not … I have a duty to talk; I have a duty to explain what happened.”