After Bankman-Fried’s appearance this Tuesday before the Nassau Court, Chief Magistrate Joyann Ferguson-Pratt determined that the young financier should remain in pretrial detention and ordered his entry into the Bahamas Department of Correctional Services until February 8, 2023.
On December 13, 2022, the Southern District of New York (SDNY) attorney’s office and SDNY attorney Damian Williams revealed that FTX co-founder Sam Bankman-Fried was charged with “fraud, money laundering and campaign finance offences. SDNY attorney Williams said the case was not an issue of “mismanagement or poor supervision” but “intentional fraud, plain and simple.”
Ferguson-Pratt adjourned this morning’s hearing to allow the defendant to speak with his attorney Jerone Roberts, as Bankman-Fried claimed he could not be reached, and the hearing resumed in the afternoon.
SDNY DA’s Office and Attorney Williams Charge SBF with Eight Financial Crimes
An indictment was unsealed by a federal grand jury in Manhattan on December 13, 2022, tied to disgraced former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF). The SDNY Department of Justice (DOJ) press release details that SBF is charged with “conspiracy to commit wire fraud, commodity fraud, securities fraud, money laundering, as well as conspiracy to defraud the Federal Election Commission, and commit campaign finance violations.”
The SDNY DOJ indictment says SBF faces up to 165 years in prison, and investigators note that since 2019, “Bankman-Fried and his accomplices perpetrated a scheme to defraud FTX customers by misappropriating billions of dollars of the funds of those clients.”
In addition, the Department of Justice claims that SBF “allegedly used billions of dollars of FTX client funds for its own personal use, to make investments, and millions of dollars in political contributions to federal political committees and candidates.”
SEC and CFTC Charges against SBF
The news from the DOJ’s Manhattan team follows charges brought against SBF by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), and a lawsuit filed by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC).
Both charges detail that FTX executives allegedly engaged in fraud from day one. SDNY attorney Damian Williams said in a statement Tuesday that he believes the fraud was frankly intentional, “not a case of mismanagement, or poor supervision.”
Interestingly, in the SEC, CFTC, and SDNY DOJ charges, Sam Bankman-Fried is the only person charged other than his companies, and former Alameda executive Caroline Ellison is not named.
In Tuesday’s SDNY DOJ press release, FBI Deputy Director of the FBI’s New York Field Office, Michael J. Driscoll, warned that “we will persist in our efforts to bring him to justice.” Reuters further reported on Tuesday, that despite SBF’s alleged mental illnesses, the Bahamian magistrate in charge of his case denied his bail. “Bankman-Fried will be sent to the Bahamas Department of Corrections until February 8, [the] judge says.”
By Audy Castaneda
