After more than three weeks of legal proceedings involving expert witnesses and former FTX and Alameda employees, the charges against Sam "SBF" Bankman-Fried, brought by the U.S. Department of Justice, have been withdrawn. According to reports from the court on October 26, the last witness presented by the U.S. government was FBI agent Mark Troiano, whose testimony primarily revolved around SBF's involvement in over 300 groups using the messaging app Signal. Following Troiano's testimony, Bankman-Fried's legal team filed a motion to dismiss, but Judge Lewis Kaplan promptly denied it.
Two witnesses were presented by SBF's attorneys, Mark Cohen and Christian Everdell, in Bankman-Fried's defense. The first witness, Bahamian lawyer Krystal Rolle, shared that she had accompanied SBF to a meeting with the Bahamas Securities Commission in November 2022 and witnessed him transferring FTX assets to authorities.
The second witness, Joseph Pimbley from the litigation consulting firm PF2 Securities, testified that he was compensated over $50,000 for extracting data from Amazon Web Services concerning Alameda Research's credit line with FTX, along with data on approximately 10,000 to 11 million cryptocurrency exchange users. During the examination, Justice Department attorneys inquired whether Pimbley was aware of how FTX funds were being utilized or the function of the "allow negation" button, which permitted Alameda to trade with more funds than they actually had available.
Throughout the proceedings, Judge Kaplan occasionally interjected with comments such as "that's not helpful" and "can we get to the point?" when the defense attorneys questioned witnesses. At the time of reporting, Bankman-Fried had not yet testified, but his legal team anticipated his testimony would span approximately four hours.
During an October 25 conference call, defense attorneys informed Judge Kaplan of their intention to have Bankman-Fried testify as part of their case in support of the former FTX CEO. In prior testimony, the prosecution had called former Alameda CEO Caroline Ellison, former FTX chief technology officer Gary Wang, and former FTX engineering director Nishad Singh to discuss SBF's role in directing Alameda's use of FTX funds.
The trial of Bankman-Fried is set to conclude in a few business days, following which closing arguments will be presented, and the judge will deliberate on any motions filed by either the prosecutors or defense attorneys. However, the former FTX CEO is slated to face an additional five criminal charges in a second trial, scheduled to commence in March 2024. SBF has entered a not guilty plea to all charges in both cases.
