New York [US], November 3:On November 3, AP reported that the founder of digital currency exchange FTX Sam Bankman-Fried was convicted by a jury in New York (USA) of defrauding customers and investors of at least $10 billion.
After a month-long trial, the jury rejected the 31-year-old former billionaire's defense that he had never defrauded or attempted to defraud customers before FTX, the once digital currency exchange 2nd largest in the world, collapsed due to bankruptcy last year.
Assistant District Attorney Danielle Sassoon told the jury that defendant Bankman-Fried turned his customers' accounts into "personal piggy banks," as up to $14 billion "evaporated."
Judge Lewis Kaplan said the court is expected to pronounce sentence on March 28, 2024. According to Reuters, defense attorney Mark Cohen spoke after the trial, his client affirmed his innocence and will continue to "strongly fight the charges".
The trial attracted special attention because it involved a fraud on a scale not seen since the 2009 prosecution of defendant Bernard Madoff, who defrauded thousands of investors of about $20 billion. Defendant Madoff pleaded guilty, was sentenced to 150 years in prison, and died in prison in 2021.
The trial of defendant Bankman-Fried took place in the context of the digital currency sector becoming increasingly prominent.
A few years ago, Bankman-Fried was the number one name in the digital currency world and at one point this young businessman owned a fortune of $26.5 billion, according to Forbes . However, that position quickly collapsed along with FTX's business empire in 2022.
Before his arrest, he was one of the major political donors. In the 2022 US midterm elections, he contributed $40 million to Democratic candidates, but he also admitted to being a donor to the Republican party.
In a podcast program in May 2022, the founder of FTX said he planned to sponsor more than 100 million USD in the 2024 presidential election and the ceiling could rise to 1 billion USD if Mr. Trump runs for re-election, according to NBC News.
Source: ThanhNien Newspaper