Sam Bankman-Fried seeks dismissal of charges against him.

Attorneys Attempt to Dismiss Charges Against Former FTX CEO

Lawyers representing former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried are fighting to dismiss 10 of the 13 charges filed against him. The disgraced cryptocurrency entrepreneur’s firms collapsed at the end of last year after it was discovered that FTX had improperly commingled funds with sister trading company Alameda Research.

A Classic Rush to Judgment

Bankman-Fried’s lawyers claim that the original indictment was a “classic rush to judgment” and that the case involves “civil and regulatory issues” rather than federal crimes. They argue that the government should have waited for traditional civil and regulatory processes to address the situation instead of jumping in with both feet.

• The charges contained boilerplate recitals of statutory language, followed by literally one sentence purportedly describing the basis for the charge.

Bankman-Fried was detained in the Bahamas and extradited to the United States in December. Attorneys contend that officials violated the extradition treaty between the two nations since the Bahamian government issued a warrant of surrender “specifying that he be tried on seven of the eight counts” in the original indictment, even as American officials later brought additional charges without the consent of authorities in the island nation.

Charges Against Bankman-Fried

Bankman-Fried was initially charged in December with crimes such as conspiracy to commit wire fraud, conspiracy to commit securities fraud, and conspiracy to defraud the Federal Election Commission through campaign finance violations. Another superseding indictment unveiled in February added four new charges, including conspiracy to commit bank fraud and conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money transfer business. Bankman-Fried was also charged in March with paying bribes to one or more members of the Chinese Communist Party.

Bankman-Fried faces the charges in the Southern District of New York and is expected to appear for trial in early October.

FTX Collapse

Lawyers for Bankman-Fried claim that the collapse of FTX occurred in the context of broader difficulties in the cryptocurrency sector. They argue that the market crash took down many major players in the sector, not just FTX.

However, current FTX CEO John Ray III, a bankruptcy lawyer appointed to recover lost funds on behalf of customers and investors, contends that the firm imploded as a result of mismanagement from senior executives. They reportedly discharged more than $5 billion on imprudent business investments, including advertisements with celebrities such as quarterback Tom Brady and investor Kevin O’Leary.

• The FTX Group was tightly controlled by a small group of individuals who showed little interest in instituting an appropriate oversight or control framework.
• These individuals stifled dissent, commingled and misused corporate and customer funds, lied to third parties about their business, joked internally about their tendency to lose track of millions of dollars in assets, and thereby caused the FTX Group to collapse as swiftly as it had grown.

Bankman-Fried has pleaded not guilty to all charges and currently resides with his parents in northern California.

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