With the trial of Sam Bankman-Fried quickly approaching, Justice Department prosecutors are adding to the list of witnesses scheduled to testify against the FTX founder. Prosecutors said in the latest court filing on Saturday that they planned to subpoena FTX customers to appear in court to detail how the exchange’s collapse cost them millions of dollars.
FTX, once one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges in the world, announced on 11 declared bankruptcy in March.The ensuing fallout resulted in a series of criminal charges against Bankman-Fried and his insiders, and nearly $9 billion in losses owed For FTX customers.
witness quarrel
The Justice Department has been working to remove former FTX executives since the exchange collapsed. Three of Bankman-Fried’s top deputies agreed to cooperate with prosecutors, including former Alameda CEO and ex-girlfriend Caroline Ellison, and former engineering executive Nishad Singh and Chief Technology Officer Gary Wang. A fourth, former FTX co-president Ryan Salame, pleaded guilty but said he would invoke his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.
While Bankman-Fried’s defense team and prosecutors have been arguing over which expert witnesses can testify, the latest court filing outlines additional witnesses the Justice Department plans to call.
The first group included “multiple” FTX customers, including retail customers, who prosecutors say lost tens of thousands of dollars on the failed exchange, and institutional customers, who prosecutors say lost millions of dollars.
According to the document, customers transferring funds to the exchange “expect and understand that FTX will keep their assets separate from the company’s assets, will not transfer customer assets to Alameda Research, and will not use their assets for FTX or Alameda’s own cost.”
One of the clients, a young man in Ukraine, lost a large portion of his life savings, which he transferred to exchanges after Russia invaded Ukraine last year, prosecutors said in a separate filing. Prosecutors asked that he be allowed to testify remotely because the law does not allow him to leave the country. Bankman-Fried’s attorneys are trying to challenge the request.
Prosecutors said they also plan to call FTX investors as witnesses to describe their understanding of how the exchange claimed to manage customer funds based on investor promotions. According to the filing, the testimony will demonstrate that “a reasonable investor would have found the misrepresentations to be material in making an investment decision.”
Eventually, prosecutors said they planned to call witnesses who would plead guilty — possibly Ellison, Singer and Wang. In addition, they plan to call witnesses to testify “subject to the grant of immunity” – key figures related to FTX who have not yet been disclosed.
The trial is scheduled to begin on Tuesday with jury selection.
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