NEW YORK — FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried pleaded not responsible in Manhattan federal court docket Tuesday to expenses that he cheated buyers and looted buyer deposits on his cryptocurrency buying and selling platform as a decide set a tentative trial date for October.
Bankman-Fried, 30, denied expenses accusing him of illegally diverting large sums of buyer cash from FTX to make lavish actual property purchases, donate cash to politicians and make dangerous trades at Alameda Research, his cryptocurrency hedge fund buying and selling agency.
Bankman-Fried’s legal professional, Mark Cohen, introduced his consumer’s plea, saying: “He pleads not guilty to all counts.”
Afterward, Judge Lewis A. Kaplan set a tentative trial date of Oct. 2, saying he may transfer it ahead or backward a day or two.
Wearing a backpack, Bankman-Fried marched by a crush of cameras as he entered the courthouse on a wet day to make his first look earlier than Kaplan. When he left court docket, he didn’t converse to reporters gathered exterior.
After Bankman Fried pleaded not responsible contained in the courthouse, the decide mentioned with legal professionals a schedule for continuing towards trial.
Kaplan set April dates for protection legal professionals to submit arguments difficult the validity of the costs and for prosecutors to answer them. Arguments over the motions had been set for May 18.
The decide additionally added to Bankman-Fried’s bail circumstances by banning him from accessing or transferring cryptocurrency or belongings of FTX or Alameda Research after Assistant U.S. Attorney Danielle Sassoon stated he transferred some to overseas regulators as a result of he thought they’d be extra lenient with him than U.S. authorities.
Cohen, although, insisted that Bankman-Fried had not personally transferred any belongings and that something that was moved got here on the insistence of a court docket within the Bahamas that ordered it to happen.
Prior to his look, his legal professionals despatched a letter to the decide, saying Bankman-Fried’s mother and father in current weeks have change into the goal of “intense media scrutiny, harassment, and threats, including communications expressing a desire that they suffer physical harm.”
As a outcome, the legal professionals requested that the names be redacted on court docket paperwork for 2 people who had been lined as much as signal Bankman-Fried’s $250 million private recognizance bond. Bankman-Fried was launched with digital monitoring about two weeks in the past on the situation that he await trial at his mother and father’ home in Palo Alto, California.
The decide invited prosecutors to answer the letter and stated he’ll rule at a later date after the media possible makes an argument as effectively.
Carolyn Ellison, 28, who ran Alameda, and Gary Wang, 29, who co-founded FTX, have pleaded responsible to fraud expenses and are cooperating with prosecutors in a bid for leniency. Both are free on bail.
Source: www.bostonherald.com”