NEW YORK (AP) — Opening statements were set to begin Wednesday after a jury was chosen to hear the fraud trial of FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried in New York City.
Bankman-Fried, 31, maintains he was not to blame for fraud that prosecutors allege in seven charges brought against him since his arrest last December in the Bahamas.
They say the California man defrauded thousands of investors and customers in his businesses of billions of dollars by siphoning off their money for his own uses, including financing his businesses, buying real estate and making big political contributions to try to influence government regulation of cryptocurrency.
Defense lawyers insist that their client had no criminal intent as he became famous in the crypto world while growing FTX and a related business, Alameda Research, into multibillion dollar heavyweights in the cryptocurrency industry.
Attorneys and Judge Lewis A. Kaplan reduced a pool of 45 prospective jurors to a jury of 12 with six alternates just before opening statements were set to start at noon. The jury was expected to sit through the duration of a trial projected to last up to six weeks.
Bankman-Fried became a target of investigators when FTX collapsed last November amid a rush of customers seeking to recover their deposits, less than a year after Bankman-Fried spent millions of dollars on the 2022 Super Bowl with celebrity advertisements promoting FTX as the “safest and easiest way to buy and sell crypto.”
Bankman-Fried was extradited to the United States from the Bahamas after his arrest last December.
Originally under house arrest for nearly eight months, his $250 million bond was revoked and he was jailed in August after a judge concluded he’d tried to influence trial witnesses.
