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Sam Bankman-Fried is an “awkward high-school math nerd” unfairly depicted by the federal government as “some kind of monster”, his legal professionals argued of their last pitch to persuade jurors to acquit the previous cryptocurrency mogul on trial in New York.
Addressing the 12-person jury on Wednesday afternoon, Mark Cohen acknowledged his shopper could have made “unhealthy enterprise judgments” within the run-up to the implosion of his FTX exchange, which collapsed final November with an $8bn gap in its steadiness sheet. However he argued these had been “not a criminal offense”.
Earlier prosecutors of their closing remarks accused the 31-year-old Bankman-Fried of constructing a “pyramid of deceit” that masked a scheme to steal billions of {dollars} from prospects of FTX.
Pointing theatrically to the defendant, assistant US lawyer Nick Roos mentioned, “this man, Samuel Bankman-Fried” was finally chargeable for raiding FTX depositors’ accounts to make a collection of dangerous bets, repay loans and purchase actual property.
“He spent prospects’ cash and he lied about it,” Roos added, sustaining that Bankman-Fried and his firm claimed to be the “most secure and easiest method to purchase cryptocurrencies” in promoting campaigns that includes celebrities resembling comic Larry David and soccer star Tom Brady.
The closing arguments from either side sought to contextualise the 5 weeks of testimony offered to the jury, a few of which shone a lightweight on the interior workings of FTX and its affiliated hedge fund Alameda Analysis. Bankman-Fried has pleaded not responsible to fees together with fraud and cash laundering, and will face many years in jail if convicted.
The jury heard from former executives on the alternate and Alameda, together with co-operating witnesses Caroline Ellison, Gary Wang and Nishad Singh. They pointed the finger at Bankman-Fried, alleging that he had instructed them to permit as much as $65bn of FTX buyer funds to be secretly raided.
However Cohen, Bankman-Fried’s lawyer, contended that the prosecution’s case was primarily based on the “false premise” that FTX was a fraud from the get-go, when actually “the federal government didn’t set up that Sam knew about [the size of the hole in FTX’s balance sheet] till the autumn of 2022, as a result of he didn’t”. He mentioned the federal government had intentionally targeted on his hair, garments and intercourse life with the intention to paint him as a film villain.
In his closing remarks, Roos sought to garbage claims made by Bankman-Fried on the stand earlier within the trial, suggesting that advanced buying and selling methods made it not possible for anyone particular person to be totally abreast of FTX and Alameda’s threat administration.
“This isn’t about difficult problems with cryptocurrency, not about hedging . . . it’s about lies, it’s about stealing, it’s about greed,” he instructed the court docket. “He took the cash, he knew it was improper, and he did it anyway.”
Bankman-Fried, he claimed, “thought he may speak his approach out of this”, emphasising that the previous billionaire “didn’t need to testify on this trial” however “instructed a narrative [and] lied to you”.
Roos mentioned that whereas the defendant was fluent when questioned by his personal lawyer, “he was a special particular person” on cross-examination and “couldn’t keep in mind a single element” concerning the alleged scheme, claiming some 140 instances that he couldn’t recall specifics.
“He approached each query like up was down and down was up,” Roos added.
The prosecutor pointed to proof offered throughout the federal government’s case, together with “secret spreadsheets” ready by Ellison with different steadiness sheets to be supplied to traders that disguised the extent of use of FTX buyer funds, and the institution of a line of credit score for Alameda that allowed it to do “limitless stealing”.
Roos additional argued that with the intention to imagine Bankman-Fried’s model of occasions — that he was working two profitable companies however was blindsided by a downturn within the crypto markets and a smear marketing campaign by competitor Binance — “you would need to imagine that the defendant . . . who graduated from [the Massachusetts Institute of Technology] . . . was really clueless”.
Ellison, Wang and Singh, all of whom have pleaded responsible to fraud, contradicted Bankman-Fried’s narrative, Roos mentioned, reminding the jury that “when you imagine even one in all these witnesses is telling the reality . . . the defendant is responsible”.
The jury will start deliberations after either side have completed their closing statements.
