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© Reuters. FILE PHOTO: Former FTX Chief Govt Sam Bankman-Fried, who faces fraud costs over the collapse of the bankrupt cryptocurrency alternate, leaves the Manhattan federal courtroom in New York Metropolis, U.S. March 30, 2023. REUTERS/Amanda Perobelli/File Picture
By Jonathan Stempel
NEW YORK (Reuters) -U.S. prosecutors mentioned they don’t plan to conduct a second trial in opposition to Sam Bankman-Fried, who was convicted final month of stealing from prospects of his now-bankrupt FTX cryptocurrency alternate.
In a letter filed on Friday evening in federal courtroom in Manhattan, prosecutors mentioned the “sturdy public curiosity” in a immediate decision of their case in opposition to the 31-year-old former billionaire outweighed the advantages of a second trial.
Prosecutors mentioned that curiosity “weighs significantly closely right here,” provided that Bankman-Fried’s scheduled March 28, 2024, sentencing will probably embrace orders of forfeiture and restitution for victims of his crimes.
Legal professionals for Bankman-Fried didn’t instantly reply to requests for remark.
Bankman-Fried had confronted six extra costs that had been severed from his first trial. These included marketing campaign finance violations, conspiracy to commit bribery, and conspiracy to function an unlicensed cash transmitting enterprise.
Jurors on Nov. 2 convicted Bankman-Fried on all seven fraud and conspiracy counts he confronted.
Prosecutors had accused him of looting $8 billion from FTX prospects out of sheer greed.
The decision got here practically one yr after FTX filed for chapter, erasing Bankman-Fried’s once-$26 billion private fortune in one of many quickest collapses of a serious participant in U.S. monetary markets.
Bankman-Fried may face a long time in jail when he’s sentenced by U.S. District Choose Lewis Kaplan in Manhattan.
Prosecutors mentioned a lot of the proof that could possibly be supplied at a second trial was already offered on the first trial.
In addition they mentioned a second trial wouldn’t have an effect on how a lot time Bankman-Fried may face in jail below beneficial federal pointers, as a result of Kaplan may take into account all of Bankman-Fried’s conduct when sentencing him for the counts on which he was convicted.
Bankman-Fried is predicted to enchantment his conviction.
He testified at trial that he made errors operating FTX, together with by not making a workforce to supervise danger administration, however didn’t steal buyer funds.
Bankman-Fried additionally mentioned he thought the borrowing of cash from FTX by his crypto-focused hedge fund Alameda Analysis was permissible, and that he didn’t understand how precarious their funds had develop into till shortly earlier than each collapsed.
The Massachusetts Institute of Know-how graduate has been jailed since August, when Kaplan revoked his bail after concluding that Bankman-Fried had probably tampered with potential trial witnesses.
The case is U.S. v. Bankman-Fried, U.S. District Court docket, Southern District of New York, No. 22-cr-00673.
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