On Wednesday, attorneys for Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) stated that his criminal trial scheduled to begin on October 2 might be postponed.
The attorneys for SBF stated that further time might be necessary to conduct an in-depth investigation of the facts and prepare for the future trial with a defense strategy.
The lawyers for Bankman-Fried wrote (1) in a letter to the US District Judge Lewis Kaplan on March 8 that they were not officially going to request a date change at that point.
However, it could be reasonable given that they continued to be having to wait for a “substantial portion” of proofs to be turned around and that criminal charges had already been filed against the FTX founder in late February.
The letter was in response to the fact that extra fees had been filed against the FTX creator in late February.
After the failure of Bankman-cryptocurrency Fried’s exchange in November and his subsequent arrest in December, his legal representatives noted that prosecutors filed additional fraud and conspiracy accusations toward the end of the previous month, which brought the total amount of counts against him to 12.
Christian Everdell, one of Bankman-attorneys, Fried’s, was the one who penned the following in the letter:
It is possible that it will be required to obtain an adjournment of the trial, which is currently slated to commence on October 2, 2023. This will depend on the amount of further discovery that is produced and when it is produced.
Both the CFTC and the SECÂ has filed civil lawsuits against the creator of FTX for committing fraud. The trials for these cases have already been delayed until after the criminal trial of SBF.
More Charges Against SBF, Now 12 Charges Against him!
In a further indictment that a federal court in New York handed down in February, four additional criminal claims were leveled against Bankman-Fried. These allegations included commodities fraud as well as making illegal contributions to political campaigns.
Only eight charges were included in the initial indictment against Bankman-Fried; the new 12-count indictment adds new information concerning hundreds of dollars in illicit political donations that SBF is allegedly responsible for directing.
In conjunction with the collapse of his cryptocurrency exchange FTX and the associated hedge fund Alameda Research in late 2022, the new charging document gives additional background information regarding the claims of fraud leveled against Bankman-Fried.
Reports indicate that SBF might be sentenced to as much as 40 years in jail if it is determined that he engaged in “several schemes to defraud” in relation to this case.
Bankman-Fried was arrested for the first time in late 2022, but he has since entered a not-guilty plea and is currently free on a bail of $250 million.
When two of SBF’s close colleagues, the co-founder of FTX, Gary Wang, and the ex-CEO of Alameda, Caroline Ellison, pleaded guilty in December to multiple counts of fraud and other offenses, additional legal pressure was placed on SBF. This was the case because SBF was the target of the investigation.
Wang and Ellison are assisting the United States Attorney’s Office in Manhattan in their investigation and prosecution of Bankman-Fried.