© Reuters. FILE PHOTO: Former FTX Chief Govt Sam Bankman-Fried, who faces fraud expenses over the collapse of the bankrupt cryptocurrency change, leaves the Manhattan federal courtroom in New York Metropolis, U.S. March 30, 2023. REUTERS/Amanda Perobelli/File Picture
By Jonathan Stempel
NEW YORK (Reuters) -U.S. prosecutors stated they don’t plan to conduct a second trial in opposition to Sam Bankman-Fried, who was convicted final month of stealing from clients of his now-bankrupt FTX cryptocurrency change.
In a letter filed on Friday evening in federal courtroom in Manhattan, prosecutors stated the “robust public curiosity” in a immediate decision of their case in opposition to the 31-year-old former billionaire outweighed the advantages of a second trial.
Prosecutors stated that curiosity “weighs notably closely right here,” on condition that Bankman-Fried’s scheduled March 28, 2024, sentencing will doubtless embrace orders of forfeiture and restitution for victims of his crimes.
Jurors on Nov. 2 convicted Bankman-Fried on all seven fraud and conspiracy counts he confronted. Prosecutors had accused him of looting $8 billion from FTX clients out of sheer greed.
Legal professionals for Bankman-Fried declined to remark.
Bankman-Fried had confronted six further expenses that had been severed from his first trial, together with marketing campaign finance violations, conspiracy to commit bribery, and conspiracy to function an unlicensed cash transmitting enterprise.
He had been extradited in December 2022 from the Bahamas, the place FTX was primarily based, to face the seven earlier expenses.
The Bahamas has but to grant its consent for a trial on the remaining expenses, nonetheless, leaving the timetable unsure, prosecutors stated.
Bankman-Fried’s verdict got here almost one 12 months after FTX filed for chapter, erasing his once-$26 billion private fortune in one of many quickest collapses of a serious participant in U.S. monetary markets.
Bankman-Fried may face a long time in jail when he’s sentenced by U.S. District Choose Lewis Kaplan in Manhattan.
Prosecutors stated a lot of the proof that could possibly be provided at a second trial was already offered on the first trial.
In addition they stated a second trial wouldn’t have an effect on how a lot time Bankman-Fried may face in jail underneath beneficial federal tips, as a result of Kaplan may contemplate all of Bankman-Fried’s conduct when sentencing him for the counts on which he was convicted.
Bankman-Fried is anticipated to enchantment his conviction.
He testified at trial that he made errors operating FTX, together with by not making a group to supervise danger administration, however didn’t steal buyer funds.
Bankman-Fried additionally stated he thought the borrowing of cash from FTX by his crypto-focused hedge fund Alameda Analysis was permissible, and that he didn’t understand how precarious their funds had turn out to be till shortly earlier than each collapsed.
The Massachusetts Institute of Know-how graduate has been jailed since August, when Kaplan revoked his bail after concluding that Bankman-Fried had doubtless tampered with potential trial witnesses.
The case is U.S. v. Bankman-Fried, U.S. District Courtroom, Southern District of New York, No. 22-cr-00673.