Sam Bankman-Fried’s fate is now officially in the hands of 12 jurors

By CNN Newsource

Published November 2, 2023 12:33 PM

By Allison Morrow, CNN

New York (CNN) — Sam Bankman-Fried’s fate is now officially in the hands of a jury of his peers.

Over the past four weeks in a Manhattan federal court, the 12 jurors and five alternates have sat through more than 60 hours of testimony about the rise and fall of a multibillion-dollar crypto business empire and the person at the center of it all.

On Thursday, after delivering about three hours — and 60 pages — of instructions to the jury, Judge Lewis Kaplan released the alternate jurors and sent the 12 jurors to begin deliberations.

Judge Kaplan said jurors are allowed to deliberate until 8 pm ET Thursday, but that they are under no obligation to do so. Jurors were offered dinner and a car service home if they stay late. About half an hour after that, the jury accepted that offer.

Around 7:15 pm, following a dinner break, Judge Kaplan told the court that jurors had sent notes asking for highlighters and Post-Its, a copy of the indictment and transcripts of testimonies from Matt Huang and Robert Boroujerdi, both investors in FTX.

Prosecutors have told the jury that 31-year-old Bankman-Fried orchestrated a yearslong fraud — building a “pyramid of deceit” — that ultimately crumbled when the market soured and his luck ran out.

They’ve called up witnesses who were longtime friends and business partners who, as part of their plea agreements, pointed the finger directly at Bankman-Fried as the guy calling the shots at his crypto firms, FTX and Alameda Research.

Their alleged crimes — stealing money from customer accounts and lying about it — were done at the direction of Bankman-Fried, they said.

Bankman-Fried has pleaded not guilty to seven federal counts of fraud and conspiracy, and he has broadcast to just about anyone who’ll listen his version of the events that landed both companies in bankruptcy. According to him, the mistakes that brought down FTX and Alameda were problematic, perhaps, but not illegal — the kind of sloppy errors that startups are prone to.

Chief among those errors, according to his own testimony, was was not hiring a dedicated risk management team.

“I made a number of small mistakes and a number of larger mistakes,” Bankman-Fried said on the stand last week. “By far the biggest mistake was we did not have a dedicated risk management team, we didn’t have a chief risk officer.”

But on Thursday, US Assistant Attorney Danielle Sassoon described that as a strategy rather than a mistake.

“When you’re embezzling customer money, of course you’re not going to hire a risk officer,” she said. “You can’t walk into a jewelry store, steal a diamond necklace, then walk out and say there was no security guard.”

Lead defense attorney Mark Cohen has told the jury that the government’s portrayal of his client as a “movie villain” is wrong. Although Bankman-Fried made mistakes, he never defrauded anyone, Cohen told jurors.

“In the real world — unlike the movie world — things can get messy,” Cohen said. “Poor risk management is not a crime.”

Bankman-Fried’s parents, Barbara Fried and Joseph Bankman, were both in the courtroom again Thursday. Fried was clearly emotional, occasionally pushing up her glasses to wipe her eyes with a tissue. She and her husband, both legal scholars, took copious notes as Judge Kaplan read his instructions to the jury.

When the jurors were dismissed, Bankman hugged Fried and they approached their son. Fried shared a quick conversation with Bankman-Fried, who smiled as they spoke. After their short exchange, Fried pushed her hands into her face, holding her cheeks and hiding her eyes, appearing to cry. Her husband put his arm over her shoulder to comfort her.

—Sabrina Souza contributed to this story.