FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried pleads not guilty to fraud
Published:Tuesday | January 3, 2023 | 4:20 PM
NEW YORK (AP) — FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried pleaded not guilty in Manhattan federal court Tuesday to charges that he cheated investors and looted customer deposits on his cryptocurrency trading platform as a judge set a tentative trial date for October.
Bankman-Fried, 30, denied charges accusing him of illegally diverting massive sums of customers' money from FTX to make lavish real estate purchases, donate money to politicians and make risky trades at Alameda Research, his cryptocurrency hedge fund trading firm.
Bankman-Fried's attorney, Mark Cohen, announced his client's plea, saying: “He pleads not guilty to all counts.”
Afterward, Judge Lewis A Kaplan set a tentative trial date of October 2, saying he might move it forward or backward a day or two.
Wearing a backpack, Bankman-Fried marched through a crush of cameras as he entered the courthouse on a rainy day to make his first appearance before Kaplan. When he left court, he did not speak to reporters gathered outside.
After Bankman Fried pleaded not guilty inside the courthouse, the judge discussed with lawyers a schedule for proceeding toward trial.
Kaplan set April dates for defence lawyers to submit arguments challenging the validity of the charges and for prosecutors to respond to them. Arguments over the motions were set for May 18.
The judge also added to Bankman-Fried's bail conditions by banning him from accessing or transferring cryptocurrency or assets of FTX or Alameda Research after Assistant US Attorney Danielle Sassoon said he transferred some to foreign regulators because he thought they'd be more lenient with him than US authorities.
Cohen, though, insisted that Bankman-Fried had not personally transferred any assets and that anything that was moved came at the insistence of a court in the Bahamas that ordered it to occur.
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