I know there are threads on this subject but felt the trial deserved its own. I believe the trial will start next week and hope it will be televised. IMHO he is a despicable character along with his parents. Worse than Bernie Madoff. I was pleased when the Judge jerked his chain and sent him to jail due to his failure to follow the rules.

FROM wikipedia:

Samuel Benjamin Bankman-Fried[1] (born March 5, 1992),[2] also known by the initials SBF,[3] is an American entrepreneur and investor. Bankman-Fried was the founder and CEO of the cryptocurrency exchange FTX and associated trading firm Alameda Research, both of which experienced a high-profile collapse resulting in chapter 11 bankruptcy in late 2022.

Prior to FTX's collapse, Bankman-Fried was ranked the 41st richest American in the Forbes 400, and the 60th richest person in world by The World's Billionaires.[4] His net worth peaked at $26 billion.[5] By November 11, 2022, amid the bankruptcy of FTX, the Bloomberg Billionaires Index considered his net worth to have been reduced to zero.[6][7][8] Before his wealth evaporated, Bankman-Fried was a major donor to US political campaigns, donating openly to Democratic candidates[9][10] and covertly to Republicans,[11] as well as claiming that he planned to spend around $1 billion in the 2024 U.S. presidential election.[12]

On December 12, 2022, Bankman-Fried was arrested in the Bahamas and was subsequently extradited to the United States.[13] An indictment of him before the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York was unsealed on December 13, revealing eight criminal charges for offenses including wire fraud, commodities fraud, securities fraud, money laundering, and campaign finance law violations.[14][15] An additional four charges were announced in February 2023.[16] On December 22, Bankman-Fried was released on a $250 million bond, on condition that he reside at his parents' home in California.[17] On August 11, 2023, his bail was revoked over alleged attempts at witness tampering.[18]

Early life and education
Bankman-Fried was born on March 6, 1992,[19] on the campus of Stanford University. He is the son of Barbara Fried and Joseph Bankman, both professors at Stanford Law School.[19] His aunt Linda P. Fried is the dean of Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health.[20] His brother, Gabriel Bankman-Fried, is a former Wall Street trader[21] and the former director of the non-profit Guarding Against Pandemics and its associated political action committee.[22][23][24]

Bankman-Fried attended Canada/USA Mathcamp, a summer program for mathematically talented high-school students.[19] He attended high school at Crystal Springs Uplands School in Hillsborough, California.[25] He graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2014 with a bachelor's degree in physics and a minor in mathematics. As an MIT student he lived in a coeducational group house called Epsilon Theta.[19][26][27]

Career
In the summer of 2013, Bankman-Fried worked as an intern at Jane Street Capital, a proprietary trading firm,[19] trading international ETFs.[28] He returned to work there full-time after graduation from MIT.[19]

In September 2017, Bankman-Fried left Jane Street and moved to Berkeley, California, where he worked briefly at the Centre for Effective Altruism as director of development from October to November 2017.[19][29] In November 2017, he co-founded Alameda Research, a quantitative trading firm, with Tara Mac Aulay from the Centre for Effective Altruism.[19][30] As of 2021, Bankman-Fried owned approximately 90 percent of Alameda Research.[19] In January 2018, Bankman-Fried organized an arbitrage trade, moving up to $25 million per day, to take advantage of the higher price of bitcoin in Japan compared to the United States.[19][29] After attending a late 2018 cryptocurrency conference in Macau, he moved to Hong Kong.[19][31]

Bankman-Fried founded FTX, a cryptocurrency derivatives exchange, in April 2019; it opened for business the following month.[19] On December 8, 2021, Bankman-Fried, along with other industry executives, testified before the Committee on Financial Services about regulating the cryptocurrency industry.[32][33] On May 12, 2022, it was disclosed that Emergent Fidelity Technologies Ltd., which is majority owned by Bankman-Fried, had bought 7.6 percent of Robinhood Markets stock.[34][35] In a November 2022 affidavit before the Eastern Caribbean Supreme Court,[36] and prior to his arrest, Bankman-Fried said he and FTX co-founder Gary Wang together borrowed over $546 million from Alameda Research in order to finance Emergent Fidelity Technologies' purchase of Robinhood Markets stock.[37]

In September 2022, it was reported that Bankman-Fried's advisors had offered on his behalf to help fund Elon Musk's purchase of Twitter.[38] According to messages released as part of the lawsuit between Twitter and Musk during the latter's acquisition of Twitter, on April 25, 2022, investment banker Michael Grimes wrote that Bankman-Fried would be willing to commit up to $5 billion.[39] No investment actually took place when Musk finalized the acquisition.[40] Bankman-Fried invested more than $500 million in venture capital firms, including $200 million in Sequoia Capital, itself an investor in FTX[41] Sequoia published a "glowing" profile of Bankman-Fried which it subsequently removed after the solvency crisis at FTX.[42][43]

In July 2023, allegations emerged that Bankman-Fried considered purchasing the island of Nauru to use as a bunker in the event of an apocalyptic event, in what has been described as a “misguided and sometimes dystopian” project.[44][45]

Views on charity and market regulation
Bankman-Fried has publicly stated he supports effective altruism,[46] contending that he was pursuing "earning to give" as an "altruistic career."[47] He is a member of Giving What We Can and has claimed he plans to make donations "not based on personal interest but on the projects that are proven by data to be the most effective at helping people."[48]

Bankman-Fried signed The Giving Pledge in June 2022.[49] His name was removed from the list in December 2022 following his arrest.[50]

Bankman-Fried is the founder of the FTX Future Fund, whose team included Scottish philosopher and author William MacAskill, one of the founders of the effective altruism movement. After the collapse of FTX, all members of Future Fund simultaneously resigned.[8][51] As of September 1, 2022, the Future Fund stated it "only committed around $160 million" in grants and investments.[51][a]

In November 2022, Bankman-Fried stated in a text conversation with Vox writer Kelsey Piper that the appearance that he and his company displayed of welcoming regulation and promoting the need for regulators to keep a close eye on cryptocurrency markets was not sincere, and was "just PR", adding that "they [regulators] make everything worse". On being asked about his previously stated ethical views that it's unacceptable to do unethical things for the greater good, he disagreed with those views and said that expressing those views was a "dumb game we woke westerners play where we say all the right shibboleths and so everyone likes us".[52][53][54]

Bankruptcy of FTX
Further information: Bankruptcy of FTX
In November 2022, Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao revealed on Twitter that his firm intended to sell its holdings of FTT, FTX's token.[55] Binance received $529 million worth of FTT as part of a sale of its equity in FTX in 2021.[56] Zhao published his tweet soon after a report from CoinDesk stating that the bulk of the holdings of Alameda, Bankman-Fried's trading firm, were in FTT.[56] Bloomberg and TechCrunch reported that any sale by Binance would likely have an outsize impact on FTT's price due to the token's low trading volume.[57][58] The announcement by Zhao of the pending sale and disputes between Zhao and Bankman-Fried on Twitter led to a decline in the price of FTT and other cryptocurrencies.[59] Shortly before, Zhao had criticized Bankman-Fried's lobbying efforts.[60]

On November 8, Zhao announced that Binance had entered into a non-binding agreement to purchase FTX due to a liquidity crisis at FTX.[61][62] Zhao stated that Binance would complete due diligence soon and that all crypto exchanges should avoid using tokens as collateral.[63][64] He also wrote that he expected FTT to be "highly volatile in the coming days as things develop". On the day of the announcement, FTT lost 80 percent of its value.[65] On November 9, the Wall Street Journal reported that Binance had decided not to acquire FTX.[66] Binance cited reports of FTX's mishandling of customer funds and pending investigations of FTX as the reasons the firm would not pursue the deal.[67] Amid the crisis, Bankman-Fried was no longer a billionaire, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.[6] The very next day, Bloomberg reported that the Securities and Exchange Commission and Commodity Futures Trading Commission were investigating FTX and the nature of its connections to Bankman-Fried's other holdings.[68]

On November 11, 2022, FTX, Alameda Research, and more than 130 associated legal entities declared bankruptcy.[69]

Anonymous sources cited by Reuters stated that, earlier in 2022, Bankman-Fried had transferred at least $4 billion from FTX to Alameda Research, without any disclosure to the companies' insiders or the public. The sources said that the money transferred included customer funds, and that it was ostensibly backed by FTT and shares in Robinhood.[70][71] An anonymous source cited by the Wall Street Journal stated that Bankman-Fried had disclosed that Alameda owed FTX about $10 billion which was secured through customer funds held by FTX when FTX had, at the time, $16 billion in customer assets.[72] According to anonymous sources cited by the Wall Street Journal, the Chief Executive of Alameda Research Caroline Ellison told employees that Bankman-Fried was aware that FTX had lent its customers’ money to Alameda to help it meet its liabilities.[73]

Bankman-Fried resigned as CEO of FTX on November 11 and was replaced by John J. Ray III, known for his role in the bankruptcy and restructuring of Enron.[74] FTX and related entities filed for bankruptcy in Delaware on the same day.[69] One day after FTX declared bankruptcy, on November 12, Bankman-Fried was interviewed by the Royal Bahamas Police Force.[75] On November 17, Ray stated in a sworn declaration submitted in bankruptcy court that according to the firm's records, Alameda Research had lent $1 billion to Bankman-Fried.[76][77]

Arrest and charges
On December 12, 2022, Bankman-Fried was arrested shortly after 6 p.m. in his apartment complex in the Bahamas by the Royal Bahamas Police Force, with the expectation that he would be extradited to the United States to face trial. Earlier that day, the Southern District of New York had charged Bankman-Fried with "wire fraud, wire fraud conspiracy, securities fraud, securities fraud conspiracy. and money laundering". Philip Davis, the Prime Minister of the Bahamas, commented on the arrest that "the Bahamas and the United States have a shared interest in holding accountable all individuals associated with FTX who may have betrayed the public trust and broken the law ... [W]hile the United States is pursuing criminal charges against SBF individually, the Bahamas will continue its own regulatory and criminal investigations into the collapse of FTX".[78][13][79]

Bankman-Fried would face a maximum of 115 years in prison if convicted on all eight counts and sentenced to serve each charge consecutively.[80] Braden Perry, a former senior trial lawyer at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, opined that a conviction on any of the charges might result in a prison sentence of years or decades.[81][82]

After being held at Fox Hill Prison in Nassau for ten days, Bankman-Fried consented to his extradition from the Bahamas to the United States to face charges.[83][84] He was allowed to remain free on a $250 million bond, the largest such bond ever set in an American criminal proceeding. Among the conditions was that he would stay at his parents' home in California.[17]

The arrest took place the day before Bankman-Fried was scheduled to appear before the U.S. House Committee on Financial Services.[85]

On January 3, 2023, Bankman-Fried pled "not guilty" to fraud and the other charges.[86][87]

On February 1, 2023, the judge presiding over his case, Judge Lewis Kaplan, tightened the bail conditions and forbade Bankman-Fried from contacting current or former employees of FTX without attorneys present. The restriction was imposed as Judge Kaplan considered his contact with a potential witness as a "material threat of inappropriate contact with prospective witnesses",[88] and intimated Bankman-Fried might deserve to be jailed pending trial.[89]

Four additional criminal charges levied against Bankman-Fried were announced on February 23, 2023, primarily focused on his making "more than 300 illegal political donations."[16]

A March 2023 indictment accused Bankman-Fried and others that they had "directed and caused the transfer" of at least $40 million in cryptocurrency to Chinese government officials, in order to unfreeze accounts of Alameda Research.[90]

On July 26, 2023, the judge overseeing the fraud case was set to weigh if Bankman-Fried could remain free on his current bail conditions ahead of his October 2, 2023 trial. Prosecutors alleged witness tampering after Bankman-Fried gave a reporter personal writings of Caroline Ellison, the former chief executive of his crypto hedge fund, Alameda Research.[91] The same day, prosecutors dropped a campaign finance charge filed against him due to treaty obligations to The Bahamas created by his extradition.[92]

The next month, on August 11, his bail was revoked after Judge Kaplan became convinced that there was reasonable cause to believe that Bankman-Fried had attempted to commit witness tampering; Bankman-Fried was led from the courtroom in handcuffs and remanded into custody at the Metropolitan Detention Center, Brooklyn.[93][94] In a separate illegal campaign finance indictment in August, Bankman-Fried was accused of using $100 million in stolen funds of FTX customers towards 2022 U.S. elections campaign contributions.[95][96]

On August 22, 2023 Bankman-Fried's counsel averred that he was not being provided a vegan diet and that his psychiatric medication was running low,[97] and that he could not prepare for his trial subsisting on bread, water, and peanut butter.[98]

Donations
Politics
2020 and earlier
Bankman-Fried's only campaign finance activity prior to 2019 was a $1,000 contribution in 2010 to Michael Bennet.[10] For the 2020 U.S. elections, he contributed $5.2 million to two super PACs that supported the Joe Biden 2020 presidential campaign.[10] Bankman-Fried was the second-largest individual donor to Biden in the 2020 election cycle,[99] after Michael Bloomberg.[47][100]

2021–2022
Contributions were made to members of both U.S. political parties. In 2022, Bankman-Fried provided initial financial support for Protect Our Future PAC. Protect Our Future was launched as a political action committee of the Democratic Party with $10 million in initial funding aiming to support "lawmakers who play the long game on policymaking in areas like pandemic preparedness and planning", according to Politico.[101] Bankman-Fried donated $27 million in total to this PAC.[102]

Donations to Republican Party campaigns in the 2021–22 cycle have been estimated at $262,200,[103] including donations to senators Susan Collins of Maine, Mitt Romney of Utah, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, and Ben Sasse of Nebraska.[10] Journalist Matthew Kassel says that Bankman-Fried had often donated to politicians who cultivate good Israel–United States relations but concluded "it is unclear if his backing of pro-Israel candidates was coincidental or motivated by any personal interest in Middle East policy."[104]

Bankman-Fried has claimed he also donated large amounts of money to Republicans through dark money channels.[11]

2022 U.S. midterm elections
Bankman-Fried was the second-largest individual donor to Democratic causes for the 2022 U.S. elections, with total donations of $39.8 million, only behind George Soros,[105][106][107] of which $27 million was given to the Protect Our Future PAC.[102][108][109] Additional recipients included The Next 50 PAC, Guarding Against Pandemics PAC, and the leadership PAC for Brendan Boyle.[24][110][111] Bankman-Fried said in February 2022 that his political contributions were not aimed at influencing his policy goals for the cryptocurrency ecosystem; however, FTX was circulating a list of suggestions to policymakers at the time.[10] He said in an interview that he would prefer the Commodity Futures Trading Commission take a larger role in regulating and guiding the crypto industry.[10] According to The New York Times, the CFTC has a reputation for favoring relatively relaxed regulations for the industry when contrasted with other regulators like the Securities and Exchange Commission.[112]

Bankman-Fried pushed for regulations via the proposed Digital Commodities Consumer Protection Act (DCCPA) by extensively lobbying Congress, which was perceived as being favorable to FTX but harmful to the broader industry, especially its decentralized finance competitors.[113][114][115] In May 2022, Bankman-Fried stated that he planned to spend "north of $100 million" in the 2024 presidential election with a "soft ceiling" of $1 billion.[116] In October 2022, he walked back his pledged spending, calling it a "dumb quote on my part".[117]

In the aftermath of the FTX scandal, recipients of Bankman-Fried's and other FTX executives' political campaign contributions have been donating equal amounts to charitable organizations. Elected officials doing so include Senator Kirsten Gillibrand,[118] as well as Representatives Chuy García and Kevin Hern.[119] A spokesperson for former Texas gubernatorial candidate Beto O'Rourke said that his campaign had received a $1 million donation from Bankman-Fried in October 2022, but returned the funds in early November, prior to the election.[120]

Pandemic prevention contributions and related controversy
Bankman-Fried and his younger brother, Gabriel, contributed toward pandemic prevention initiatives, according to an investigative report by The Washington Post.[121] One such funding recipient was the Guarding Against Pandemics PAC, founded by Gabriel.[24]

On May 15, 2022, FTX announced it had donated $18 million to support "TOGETHER Trial," a private, international, research consortium conducting clinical trials to test existing drugs as treatments for various conditions, including COVID-19.[122][123]

On July 20, 2023, an Insiders Avoidance Complaint was filed against Bankman-Fried and three former FTX/Alameda senior executives seeking to recover “hundreds of millions of dollars that Defendants misappropriated.” The plaintiffs were FTX Trading Ltd., Alameda Research LLC, Alameda Research Ltd., North Dimension Inc., Cottonwood Grove Ltd., and Realm Shires, Inc. Their complaint stated that Guarding Against Pandemics —which received $35 million from Bankman-Fried between October 2021 and May 2022— and its associated political action committee “needless to say, did nothing to prevent pandemics.”[124]

Personal life
Bankman-Fried is vegan.[31] He was raised in a Jewish family.[125][104] As of mid-2021, it was reported that he lived in a five-bedroom penthouse in the Bahamas with approximately ten roommates.[27][126] After the collapse of FTX, the penthouse was put up for sale for close to $40 million.[127]

According to former employees of FTX and Alameda, Bankman-Fried was romantically involved with co-worker Caroline Ellison, the CEO at Alameda Research.[128][129]

Bankman-Fried played League of Legends, and allegedly played the game so ceaselessly that it interfered with work — including while on a call attempting to secure an investment from Sequoia Capital.[130][131] An article by the Financial Times characterized Bankman-Fried's "win ratios" in League of Legends as "average-to-bad".[132]

Recognition
2021: Named in Forbes 30 Under 30 – North America - Finance[133]
Notes
In the meantime, Bankman-Fried reportedly had spent approximately $135 million on naming rights for Miami Heat's basketball arena and an estimated $30 million on a single Super Bowl ad.[51]
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This message has been edited. Last edited by: ZSMICHAEL,

The Trial of Crypto’s Golden Boy Episode 1: The Limit Does Not Exist

quote:

Before his downfall, Sam Bankman-Fried drew comparisons to Warren Buffett, J.P. Morgan and other titans of finance. As his trial approaches, WSJ’s Caitlin Ostroff charts the meteoric rise of crypto’s golden boy, exploring how he sold customers and powerful people on his ideas, while hiding secrets under the hood of his flashy crypto empire.

We Asked New Yorkers if They’d Heard of Sam Bankman-Fried
The link has video. It is interesting.
LINK: https://www.coindesk.com/polic...f-sam-bankman-fried/

I guess no one is paying much attention to this trial. It has plenty of salacious detail and has implications for all of us. Apparently Sam contributed 10 million to the Biden campaign. THe WSJ is doing a good job of covering the trial as well as the War in the Middle East.

Based on the evidence that's come in so far it's hard to see what he hoped to gain by going to trial. I don't see how he avoids testifying and, when he does, digging a pretty deep hole even deeper.

Maybe he's some combination of narcissistic and delusional and truly thinks he can outsmart everyone (or he just wants to go out in a blaze of public glory).

quote:

Originally posted by DaveL:

Maybe he's some combination of narcissistic and delusional and truly thinks he can outsmart everyone

This right here.

I watched a 60 minutes interview of Michael Lewis. He wrote Moneyball, The Big Short, Liar's Poker and other books. He is writing a book on Samuel Bankman Fried (SBF). Though it sounds like Lewis was a bit impressed by SBF, it's pretty clear that SBF is a guy of high intellectual ability but nonexistent moral grounding.

I have met the type, they believe they are the smartest people in the room. Sometimes they are. I worked with two of these people. They would actually have conversations along the lines of how painful it was to deal with others (aka my coworkers and I) of a lower intellect.

I can see that SBF believes himself above the laws and conventions of mere citizens. He did what he wanted including providing millions in funds to candidate HE deemed worthy. He is guilty of fraud at the highest level and should be locked up.

Oh, the two intellectuals I worked with? One got fired for calling a group of women that reported to him "stupid motherfuckers". He earned the firing since it wasn't the first time. The other was not promoted over the course of 5 years and determined the company was not ready for his capabilities. I am sad to see him go....said no one.

quote:

Originally posted by SPWAMike0317:
I have met the type, they believe they are the smartest people in the room. Sometimes they are. I worked with two of these people. They would actually have conversations along the lines of how painful it was to deal with others (aka my coworkers and I) of a lower intellect.

I can see that SBF believes himself above the laws and conventions of mere citizens. He did what he wanted including providing millions in funds to candidate HE deemed worthy. He is guilty of fraud at the highest level and should be locked up.

Pretty much described half of Silicon Valley. The smug arrogance oozes out of every building in the 650-area code. Engineers and programers shit-talking the HR and sales departments.

Bankman-Fried's parents were leftist ideologues, his mother co-founded Mind the Gap, a Democrat fund-raising machine that tapped into a variety of deep-pocket tech founders and officers while being a tenured Stanford law professor. His central belief in effective altruism motivated his actions in wealth accumulation and disseminating it principally to the Democrat party. Rules, guidelines, morals and values are meant to be broken, the constant drumbeat of the buzzword 'disruption' is a hardwired mantra. Guys like SBF are typical of the mindset amongst the tech world.