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# Sam Bankman-Fried found guilty of fraud
The former cryptocurrency magnate, Sam Bankman-Fried, has been convicted of fraud by a New York jury on November 2nd. He has been defending himself against allegations of criminal mismanagement of his crypto exchange FTX and trading firm Alameda Research.
# Verdict and Charges
After a month-long trial, the jury took four and a half hours to find Bankman-Fried guilty on all seven charges, including wire fraud, conspiracy to commit wire fraud, and conspiracy to commit money laundering. He is scheduled to be sentenced by Judge Lewis Kaplan on March 28th of next year and faces decades in prison.
# Allegations against FTX and Alameda Research
Bankman-Fried founded FTX in 2019, and its value skyrocketed during a post-pandemic crypto boom. However, prosecutors alleged that the operation was fraudulent from the beginning. Former colleagues testified that the exchange falsified numbers and provided secret privileges to Alameda, including a $65 billion line of credit, allowing Alameda’s balance to dip into the negative by illicitly borrowing FTX customer funds.
# Antagonizing Prosecutors and Court
Leading up to his trial, Bankman-Fried antagonized prosecutors and the court. Placed under house arrest, he was sent to jail in August for violating his bail conditions, including using a VPN to watch a football game and leaking the diary entries of his ex-girlfriend and former Alameda Research CEO Caroline Ellison, who pleaded guilty to federal charges and testified against him in trial.
# Defense and Contradicting Testimonies
In court, Bankman-Fried’s defense argued that he honestly failed at operating a high-risk business. He denied directly supervising the damning code updates that allowed Alameda to spend FTX funds and claimed he had not participated in trading or questioned employees about billions of missing dollars. His testimony was contradicted by Ellison, his former roommates Adam Yedidia and Gary Wang (the co-founder of FTX), and family friend Nishad Singh; all had worked under Bankman-Fried and later cooperated with prosecutors. Wang, Singh, and Ellison are awaiting sentencing.
