A tycoon in the U.S. currency circle may face a hundred years in prison. He was betrayed by his ex-girlfriend and has a way of evading responsibility.

Starting from October 4, local time, Sam Bankman-Fried, a former benchmark tycoon in the U.S. currency circle, a former billionaire, a top student at MIT, and a current criminal suspect, has just turned 31 Year-old, often referred to as SBF) criminal case was formally tried in the federal court in Manhattan, New York. The trial is expected to last six weeks.
U.S. federal prosecutors accused Sam of stealing at least US$10 billion (approximately RMB 73 billion) from customers and investors, using it to fund political donation companies and purchase luxury real estate, and was suspected of multiple criminal charges such as fraud and money laundering.
The British "Financial Times" reported that a different kind of "freedom" is coming when Sam walks into a Manhattan court to face criminal charges. If these charges are convicted, the maximum sentence will be more than a hundred years, that is, he will face more than a century in prison.
Sam's case can be described as the "trial of the century." Next, let’s talk about this case, which can be regarded as “talking about money and talking about the case”.
The starting point of the Sam case came from the collapse of the leading trading platform in the currency circle.
One is the cryptocurrency exchange FTX (established in May 2019) which he co-founded when he was 27 years old. The second is that he co-founded the crypto hedge fund “Alameda Research” (established in September 2017) when he was 25 years old.
In just three years, FTX has become the third largest cryptocurrency exchange in the world. This is not unrelated to Sam's hard work and money to promote. Sam spent millions of dollars on the Super Bowl, inviting celebrities including American NBA stars to advertise for FTX, promoting FTX as “the safest and simplest cryptocurrency trading platform.”
However, in November 2022, a customer run frenzy broke out on FTX, and it received US$5 billion in withdrawals in one day alone on November 6. Prior to this, FTX "lent" US$10 billion in customer funds to affiliated companies—— Alameda "pays debt." FTX is out of money.
Five days later, on November 11, FTX filed for bankruptcy, which immediately triggered a major earthquake in the currency circle.
Subsequently, U.S. prosecutors launched a criminal investigation into Sam on suspicion of fraud, money laundering and other crimes. After his arrest in December last year, Sam was briefly "free" on a huge bail of $250 million. In August this year, Sam was arrested and jailed because a US judge believed that he tried to influence witnesses while on bail.
Witnesses in Sam's case include his former partner and ex-girlfriend.
Gary Wang ("Gary"), who is the same age as Sam, graduated from MIT with a major in mathematics and computer science. In 2019, Gary and Sam co-founded FTX.
Caroline Ellison, who is two years younger than Sam, is a top math student who graduated from Stanford University and is also Sam's ex-girlfriend. She joined Alameda in 2018 and became the company's CEO in October 2021.
One month after the collapse of FTX and Alameda, the two top students from prestigious universities pleaded guilty.
In December 2022, Gary and Caroline respectively reached plea agreements with U.S. prosecutors and pleaded guilty to wire fraud, as well as conspiracy to commit wire transfer, securities and commodity fraud, and money laundering.
It can be said that Sam was "betrayed", but fortunately his parents always protected him, sharing wealth and hardship, because they were also prosecuted.
Sam’s mother, Barbara Fried, and his father, Joseph Bankman, are both “well-respected” professors who have taught at Stanford Law School for more than 30 years.
Lawyers suing them are seeking to recover cash and gifts worth tens of millions of dollars, including a luxury villa in FTX's "hedon paradise."
In the Bahamas, an archipelago country in the North Atlantic, FTX established a real estate subsidiary and spent hundreds of millions of dollars to purchase dozens of luxury properties for use by its senior employees and Sam's parents, creating a "hedonistic paradise."
The most expensive luxury apartment is worth $30 million, a six-bedroom penthouse shared by Sam and several of his colleagues, while another luxury villa worth $164 billion is for Sam's parents to enjoy when they vacation.
U.S. prosecutors: This was a huge fraud
Assistant U.S. Attorney Nathan Rehn of the U.S. Department of Justice said in his opening statement that a year ago Sam seemed to be "on top of the world" running the multibillion-dollar FTX company he founded.
At the time, he was living in a $30 million condo in the Bahamas, traveling the world on private jets, hobnobbing with celebrities, and spending billions to influence Washington while flaunting power and making huge political donations. Regulation of Cryptocurrencies.
Lane said Sam took billions of dollars from thousands of victims in "a massive fraud" and that before his company collapsed, Sam falsified document dates, deleted information, and ordered employees to pay monthly Automatically delete all information in an attempt to cover up their crimes,
US prosecution witness: Sam and I are "old friends"
Adam Yedidia, one of the first witnesses for the U.S. prosecution, said in court that he and Sam were "old friends" and that they were both students at MIT and that they later worked and lived together in the Bahamas. .
Yedidiya said that in early November last year, when he learned that Sam used FTX customer funds to pay off Alameda debt, he withdrew from FTX and stopped contacting Sam.
Yedidiya said he would be protected from prosecution under an immunity order as long as he testified truthfully. He said that as a developer of FTX, he may have "inadvertently" written code that facilitated crime.
U.S. defense lawyer: Sam didn’t lie, that’s right
Sam's attorney, Mark Cohen, said in his opening statement that his client "contrary to the story" told by prosecutors, "Sam did not defraud anyone and did not intend to defraud anyone."
Cohen said Sam was a "math nerd who didn't drink or party" who was educated at MIT and worked on Wall Street for several years before starting his own business.
Cohen believed that Sam took responsibility for the crisis caused by the outside world, as if Sam was a "savior" who did his best.
Cohen claimed that his actions in his final days as head of the company were evidence that Sam believed he was dealing with a liquidity crisis fueled by a more than 70% plunge in cryptocurrency value and criticism from one of his biggest rivals. These criticisms from competitors triggered a wave of runs on FTX customers.
In addition to blaming outsiders, the lawyer also blamed the incompetence of those around Sam.
Cohen claimed that Sam’s deputies failed to do their jobs, including establishing appropriate financial hedges to protect FTX from last year’s collapse in cryptocurrency prices. He also pointed out that these Sam's employees also failed to plug software loopholes, which was one of the many reasons for FTX's failure, and these reasons were not Sam's fault.
Sam's defense attorney told the jury: "Sam acted in good faith and made what was considered a reasonable business decision at the time... As the CEO of a company filing for bankruptcy, this is not a crime."
The saying "Sam is not at fault, it's everyone else's fault" is so familiar. Uncle Sam, you can always use it.