The US Department of Justice (DoJ) has filed a lawsuit against FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF), accusing him of leaking private documents of his former business ally and romantic partner, Caroline Ellison.
in the new complaint submit On July 20, the DOJ charged Bankman-Fried with attempting to interfere with a fair trial by publicly discrediting Ellison, who became a government witness in the SBF case in late 2022.
SBF attempted to publicly discredit her by sharing personal writings of government witnesses with journalists so that these private documents would appear in articles published U.S. Attorney Damian Williams argued in the complaint, The New York Times reported on July 20.
In her diary, Ellison described feeling overwhelmed by her job at the Alameda Research Center, along with the pain of her romantic breakup with SBF and professional insecurity.
Williams said that while the article did not identify who provided the documents to The New York Times, it was “clear” that the documents were shared by Bankman-Fried. He wrote:
“When the government was informed this week that the article was about to be published, defense attorneys confirmed that the accused personally met with one of the article’s authors and shared with him documents that were not part of the government’s discovery.”
The attorney went on to say that, based on excerpts from the article, the documents “do not appear to be part of the discovery material in this case, but likely came from the defendant’s personal Google Drive account.”
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Williams then wrote that U.S. federal rules of civil procedure prohibit attorneys and their representatives from releasing non-public information that could interfere with a fair trial. The government therefore asked the court for an order under Local Rule 23.1, which prohibits “extrajudicial statements by parties and witnesses” that could interfere with a fair trial by an impartial jury. Williams added:
“Having this story appear in a reputable newspaper with a global readership without naming the accused as a source would have cast a misleading layer of legitimacy on an otherwise stark defense and increased the risk of tainting future jurors.”
Cointelegraph reached out to the DOJ and SBF defense attorneys but did not immediately hear back. This article will be updated with new information.
FTX was once the world’s major cryptocurrency exchange, but it collapsed in mid-November 2022. The incident may have been triggered by the liquidity crisis of the company’s FTT token. Some industry watchers have also attributed the collapse to a massive bear market in 2022, as well as deeper issues related to the connection between FTX and Alameda.
Subsequently, as many as seven lawsuits were filed against him by early December 2022 after SBF’s cryptocurrency empire collapsed. The former FTX CEO is due to appear in court on October 2 charged with fraud, illegal political donations and bribery to the Chinese government, among other charges.
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