prosecutor in a criminal case against Sam Bankman-FriedThe founder of collapsed cryptocurrency exchange FTX provided on Monday the most detailed description yet of the evidence used to convict him at trial in October.
In a 70-page court filing, prosecutors said they would seek testimony from some of Mr. Bankman-Fried’s closest advisers, as well as an expert witness and other employees of FTX and Alameda Research, a crypto hedge fund he also founded. Did it too.
Prosecutors also said they planned to use the notes Caroline EllisonMr. Bankman—one of Fried’s top lieutenants—had conversations with him, including a memo titled “Things Sam Is Freaking Out About”. And they said they would produce a recording of a meeting in which Ms. Ellison told Alameda employees that she had worked with Mr. Bankman-Fried to siphon money from FTX customers’ accounts.
Mr. Bankman-Fried, a lifelong crypto mogul who built FTX into one of the world’s largest virtual currency exchanges, was arrested in december and accused of orchestrating an elaborate scheme to use customers’ deposits to make real estate purchases, charitable donations and donations to politicians. Ms. Allison and two other top FTX executives, Gary Wang and Nishad Singh have pleaded guilty to participating in the attempt and have agreed to cooperate with prosecutors.
Mr Bankman-Fried faces seven charges of wire fraud, securities fraud, commodity fraud and money laundering. He has pleaded innocent and is due to stand trial on 2 October. Last week, he was sent to jail The judge monitoring the case canceled his bail on the allegation that he was trying to intimidate witnesses.
A spokeswoman for Mr. Bankman-Fried declined to comment. Ms Ellison’s lawyer did not respond to a request for comment.
Prosecutors’ filing on Monday argued that the evidence they collected should be legally admissible at Mr Bankman-Fried’s trial. The evidence includes financial records, spreadsheets, Google Docs and private communications, according to the filing.
Mr Bankman-Fried’s lawyers submitted their own memorandum on Monday, claiming prosecutors had “repeatedly failed” to meet deadlines to hand over evidence to the defence. The filing said that just three days earlier, prosecutors produced nearly 750,000 pages of Slack messages from Mr. Wang’s laptop. They said the government should not be allowed to use evidence presented to the defense after July 1, and that other material, including evidence relating to Mr Bankman-Fried’s resignation from FTX, should also be excluded from the trial.
“The defense does not have unlimited resources and should spend the limited time remaining before trial preparing its defense rather than reviewing the submissions at the eleventh hour,” the filing said.
Over the course of several months of investigation, prosecutors have gathered information millions of pages of evidence As he prepares for the trial of Mr. Bankman-Fried, one of the largest funds ever collected in a white-collar securities fraud case brought by federal authorities in Manhattan.
The government’s court filing on Monday offered the first detailed look at the evidence and witnesses prosecutors plan to present at trial. The filing said the government plans to cite spreadsheets created by Ms. Ellison, Mr. Singh and Mr. Wang that “tracked illegal money flows between Alameda and FTX”, and FTX that appeared on TV Let’s talk about advertisements.
Prosecutors also plan to cite Mr. Bankman-Fried’s political information as evidence for the fraud charges. The filing cited a text message that Ryan Salame, a high-ranking FTX executive, sent to a family member in November 2021, in which Mr. Bankman-Fried accused Bankman-Fried of using political donations to promote cryptocurrencies in Washington. The plan was described.
The purpose of the donation was to “eliminate anti crypto dem for pro crypto dem and anti crypto repub for pro crypto repub,” Mr. Salame wrote in the message. He further said that Mr. Bankman-Fried would “send money through me to eliminate the Republican side.”
Mr. Salame has been under investigation for several months and the result is out raided his house in April, although he has not been charged with any crime. The filing said he was “unavailable as a witness” because his attorney exercised his Fifth Amendment right not to provide self-incriminating information.
A lawyer for Mr. Salame did not respond to a request for comment.
But the filing said Ms. Ellison, Mr. Singh and Mr. Wang are all expected to testify. Prosecutors said they would also call other former FTX and Alameda employees, including someone who “regularly consulted with the defendants about FTX’s fund-raising efforts.”
Ms Ellison’s testimony in particular is likely to be crucial to the prosecution’s case. In addition to running Alameda, Ms. Ellison was in an on-and-off romantic relationship with Mr. Bankman-Fried.
The filing provides a transcript of a meeting Ms. Ellison held with Alameda employees in November 2022, as FTX and Alameda were collapsing amid a run on deposits. According to the transcript, an employee asked Ms. Ellison who made the decision to withdraw customer funds.
“Umm…Sam, I guess,” he replied.
Matthew Goldstein Contributed reporting.
