According to multiple published reports, a federal judge on Tuesday (April 28) denied the self-written motion submitted by Bankman-Fried, who is serving 25 years in prison for his role in the multi-billion dollar collapse of the FTX crypto exchange in 2022.
In this motion, 34-year-old Bankman-Fried had argued there were new witnesses whose testimony would justify a new trial. Judge Lewis Kaplan, who presided over the trial, deemed this claim baseless.
“None of the witnesses, for example, is ‘newly discovered.’ Bankman-Fried well before trial knew all three of them and purportedly knew also what he hoped they would say were they to testify,” the judge said. “He could have obtained or at least sought to compel their testimony. But he did neither.”
The judge called Bankman-Fried’s assertion that the three former FTX executives were prevented from testifying on his behalf by government threats and retaliation is “wildly conspiratorial and entirely contradicted by the record.”
While Bankman-Fried is also appealing his conviction and sentence via his lawyer, he made this motion on his own, per a report from Bloomberg News.
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That report notes that this strategy seems to have annoyed the judge, who said the motion appeared to be “part of a plan to rescue his reputation that Bankman-Fried hatched and even committed to writing after FTX declared bankruptcy but before he was indicted.”
According to a report from Gizmodo, this “plan” is an apparent reference to evidence released by the prosecution in 2024, a document written by Bankman-Fried before his indictment. It included what he described as “probably bad ideas” such as appearing on Tucker Carlson’s TV show to establish himself as a Republican.
(Bankman-Fried would eventually be interviewed by Carlson, though only after he was sentenced to prison.)
Bankman-Fried was convicted of seven criminal counts including fraud and conspiracy, after jurors found he illegally shifted billions from FTX customers to Alameda Research, the company’s sister hedge fund. Risky investments at Alameda helped fuel FTX’s downfall, which rocked the cryptocurrency sector.
At trial, jurors heard from several former FTX executives who said Bankman-Fried had directed them to commit fraud. Among them was Caroline Ellison, former head of Alameda and sometimes-romantic partner of Bankman-Fried. She had been sentenced to two years in prison for her role in the fraud, but was granted early release.
