Prosecutors accuse Sam Bankman-Fried of being two-faced on stand
The post Prosecutors accuse Sam Bankman-Fried of being two-faced on stand appeared on BitcoinEthereumNews.com.
Sign up to our free US news bulletin sent straight to your inbox each weekday morning Sign up to our free morning US email news bulletin Days before Sam Bankman-Fried’s crypto exchange FTX collapsed in November 2022, he tweeted his support for regulation that protected customer deposits. In encrypted messages, he was saying: “F*** regulators.” Those public and private faces of Mr Bankman-Fried came into sharp focus as he faced intense cross-examination at his fraud and money laundering trial in Manhattan on Monday. Assistant US attorney Danielle Sassoon quizzed the 31-year-old former billionaire about public statements on social media and in media interviews in which he portrayed FTX as transparent, safe and trustworthy. Answering in stilted “yeps”, “yeahs” and “No, but I may haves,” he was at times evasive and defensive about the apparent discrepancies between his public and private claims. He testified that he had conducted thousands of interviews, and that he had did a “good job” with the press, but struggled to remember specific details until confronted with them as the government put them into evidence. “Mr Bankman-Fried, would you agree that you know how to tell a good story?” Ms Sassoon asked him. “I don’t know, it depends on what metric you use,” he responded. Ms Sassoon put it to Mr Bankman-Fried that his statements on the protection of customer assets were a public relations ploy. “In private, you said things like ‘f*** regulators’” Mr Bankman-Fried replied that he “said that once”. Sam Bankman-Fried has denied intentionally ripping off FTX customers (REUTERS) Prosecutors have accused Mr Bankman-Fried of using a secret backchannel to funnel around $15bn from FTX’s customer funds to support risky bets by Alameda Research, invest in high-end real estate, fund sponsorship deals and make political contributions. Mr Bankman-Fried owned both and allegedly controlled companies,…
Filed under: News - @ October 30, 2023 7:20 pm