The former CEO of FTX may not be able to use the credits to offset the two charges of wire fraud and six counts of conspiracy he is charged with.
What happens if he's found guilty?
Sam Bankman-Fried, the former CEO of FTX, may not be allowed to use the credits he would earn if he enters a guilty plea (1) instead of going to trial to balance the two charges of wire fraud and the six counts of conspiracy he is charged with. Bankman-Fried is scheduled to appear in court in the first few days of January to enter a plea, and Mark Kasten, an attorney with Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney's Blockchain and Crypto Assets practice area, asserted that Bankman-Fried would be "unlikely to obtain a fair bargain from prosecutors."
Kasten emphasized that to get credit for cooperation, the government sometimes expects defendants to help with the prosecution of others. It is doubtful that Bankman-Fried can blame anyone in this situation, Kasten remarked. Bankman-Fried might potentially agree to an open plea (2), which means prosecutors did not agree to suggest a specific sentence, like Caroline Ellison and Gary Wang did, according to Kasten. The judge will now decide how to punish the offender.
SBF's defense claims
Bankman-Fried is accused of conspiring to mislead consumers and lenders, securities fraud, commodities fraud, money laundering, and conspiring to break the law regarding political financing. It's estimated that he may spend 115 years in prison if found guilty. John Ray informed the media that FTX was in bankruptcy when he was the CEO. said he had never witnessed such a total failure of corporate controls at every level of an organization, from the complete lack of any internal controls or governance whatsoever before, according to testimony given to the United States House Financial Services Committee.
According to Ray, the collapse of the exchange was caused by the concentration of control in the hands of a very small group of extremely unskilled and unsophisticated persons."Bankman-Fried will be heard by Judge Lewis Kaplan, a man with a solid reputation for being plain and effective, on January 3 in the Southern District of New York. Judge Ronnie Abrams resigned owing to conflicts of interest, and Kaplan was given the case in his place. Davis Polk & Wardwell, a legal firm that advised Abrams, has a partner who is FTX in 2021.
