The choose’s feedback got here simply earlier than he denied Bankman-Fried’s request to be launched from jail to organize for trial.
Sam Bankman-Fried, the indicted founding father of now-bankrupt cryptocurrency alternate FTX, could face a “very lengthy sentence” if convicted at his fraud trial beginning subsequent week, the choose overseeing the case stated on Thursday.
United States District Decide Lewis Kaplan’s feedback got here simply earlier than he denied the 31-year-old former billionaire’s request to be launched from jail quickly throughout the trial to raised assist his attorneys mount his protection case. Kaplan stated Bankman-Fried was a flight danger.
“Your shopper within the occasion of conviction might be taking a look at a really lengthy sentence,” Kaplan stated in a listening to in Manhattan federal court docket. “If issues start to look bleak … perhaps the time would come when he would search to flee.”
Mark Cohen, Bankman-Fried’s lawyer, stated there was “nothing within the file” to recommend that his shopper would attempt to flee. He stated Bankman-Fried had voluntarily consented to extradition from the Bahamas – the place FTX was primarily based – to the US after his December 2022 arrest.
Bankman-Fried has pleaded not responsible to seven counts of fraud and conspiracy stemming from FTX’s collapse in November 2022. He faces a statutory most of 110 years in jail, although any sentence can be decided by Kaplan primarily based on a variety of things and he would probably get far much less.
His attorneys requested Kaplan for short-term launch earlier this week, arguing they may not communicate with him after every trial day to organize for the following day’s witnesses and testimony, which they may not do if he have been taken again to the Metropolitan Detention Middle in Brooklyn on the finish of every trial day.
Kaplan stated on Thursday he was sympathetic to the protection’s considerations and would organize for Bankman-Fried to reach at court docket at 7am on most trial days to talk together with his attorneys for a number of hours earlier than testimony begins.
Prosecutors say Bankman-Fried stole billions of {dollars} in FTX buyer deposits to plug losses at Alameda Analysis, a crypto-focused hedge fund he managed.
They opposed Bankman-Fried’s request for short-term launch. On Thursday, prosecutor Danielle Kudla informed Kaplan that Bankman-Fried had “ample alternative to organize for trial” throughout the seven and a half months he was free on bail at his house in Palo Alto, California.
Kaplan jailed him on August 11 after discovering he probably tampered with witnesses at the very least twice – together with by sharing former Alameda chief govt officer Caroline Ellison’s personal writings with a New York Instances reporter.
Ellison, additionally Bankman-Fried’s former romantic accomplice, is one in every of three former members of his internal circle who’ve pleaded responsible to fraud and are set to testify towards him. Former FTX executives Gary Wang and Nishad Singh have additionally agreed to testify.
Kaplan stated on Thursday that prosecutors had requested that he grant two further witnesses immunity from being charged with crimes in alternate for his or her testimony. He didn’t establish these witnesses.
The trial begins on October 3 and will last as long as six weeks.
