Cocoa bean trader who lost $100,000 to FTX was first witness in Sam Bankman-Fried trial
Sam Bankman-Fried Trial appears at Federal Court in New York on Oct. 4th, 2023.
Artist: Claudia Johnson
Marc-Antoine Julliard typically trades cocoa beans. But in the spring of 2021, the London-based commodities broker decided to diversify into cryptocurrency trading. His platform of choice was FTX.
Two years later, Julliard stood as the prosecution’s first witness in the criminal fraud trial against FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried, who’s accused of misusing billions of dollars in client money.
In testimony that lasted around 50 minutes on Wednesday, Julliard recounted his experience with FTX, including the “extremely anxious” feeling he had the day he unsuccessfully attempted to withdraw part of the $100,000 worth of crypto and cash he had stored on the site. He and thousands of other FTX customers were practically wiped out when the exchange went belly up late last year.
Like many others, Julliard said he he was under the impression that there were “strong financials behind the company.”
Julliard is the poster child for the case the prosecution laid out in its opening statement as it tries to prove to a jury that clients were led to believe the money they stored with FTX was safe. Prospective customers, Julliard said, were drawn in through savvy marketing, with no reason to believe that FTX would be repurposing their crypto funds.
In a trial that’s set to last six weeks, Bankman-Fried, a man once revered as the “white knight” of crypto, faces seven federal charges, including wire fraud, securities fraud and money laundering, that could put him in prison for the rest of his life.
A jury was seated shortly after 11:30 a.m. (though four of the 12 jurors were already looking to be dismissed). Opening statements began about an hour later. Julliard took the stand just before 2 p.m. to a packed courthouse in Manhattan.
As the lead witness, Julliard helped lay out the government’s narrative. Much of his decision to buy into FTX had to do with the celebrities and venture funds attached to the brand. He referenced an ad with supermodel Gisele Bündchen and Formula 1 marketing. He also pointed to prolific media coverage, which bolstered his trust in the company.
Julliard wasn’t an aggressive crypto trader. He said he never participated in margin trading, or borrowing money to make purchases, nor did he engage in a lending program offered by the company that allowed users to earn interest on idle crypto.
Sam Bankman-Fried sits with his defense team during his fraud trial over the collapse of FTX, the bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange, at Federal Court in New York City, U.S., October 4, 2023 in this courtroom sketch.
Jane Rosenberg | Reuters
Defense wants customers to shoulder blame
The defense is trying to make clients accountable for what it says were their choices to buy and trade crypto.
“Sam didn’t defraud anyone,” said Mark Cohen, Bankman-Fried’s attorney, in his opening statement. Cohen called it a “hindsight case” brought by the government, and said that just because people lost money, doesn’t mean the 31-year-old Bankman-Fried committed fraud.
Bankman-Fried donned a fresh suit with a purple tie and a clean haircut — a much different look than the beach shorts, sandals and wild curls that helped define his image during crypto’s heyday. The entrepreneur, who Cohen described as a “math nerd that didn’t drink or party,” diligently took notes on his air-gapped laptop as he conversed with both of his attorneys and, during breaks, sometimes stood while emphatically motioning with his hands as he spoke to his counsel.
Throughout both sides’ opening statements, Bankman-Fried kept his eyes trained on the jury box. His head was turned 90 degrees to his right to watch those who will ultimately decide his fate. Bankman-Fried was joined in court by his parents, who are both being sued by FTX’s new management for having allegedly “exploited their access and influence within the FTX enterprise to enrich themselves…by millions of dollars.”
Cohen is projecting Bankman-Fried as a startup founder and equated running FTX and Alameda Research, his sister hedge fund, to “building a plane while flying on it.” He told the jury that there was no risk management in place. Specifically, he said the firm didn’t have a chief risk officer.
Far from the “cartoon of a villain” that the government presented, Cohen gave different explanations for his client’s supposedly illegal actions. One example dealt with the secret backdoor baked into FTX’s code that prosecutors say gave Alameda a way to borrow much needed capital.
Cohen said there was nothing secretive about this backchannel in the code base and said the special access to FTX was there because Alameda was initially set up as a market maker for the crypto exchange, which needed the liquidity, especially in its early days.
Cohen reminded the jury that the three insiders who will take the stand against Bankman-Fried have all signed cooperation agreements with the government.
A $10 billion fraud
The prosecution’s opening statement was delivered by Assistant U.S. Attorney Thane Rehn. Over the course of about a half hour, Rehn drove home the point that everyday investors were the ones who fell victim to FTX’s scheme. By the summer of 2022, he said, more than $10 billion had been stolen from thousands of FTX customers who had trusted custody of their crypto and cash to the platform.
Rehn said the evidence would show jurors how Bankman-Fried lied to FTX users, investors and lenders, and how he spent a good amount of the money he stole for his own good. Rehn referenced campaign contributions, for example, as one way that Bankman-Fried looked to curry favor on Capitol Hill.
Rehn called Alameda a “second, smaller and more secretive company” founded and controlled by Bankman-Fried that was integral to the defendant’s alleged scheme.
The government also teed up its star witness, ex-girlfriend and Alameda’s ex-CEO, Caroline Ellison. She pleaded guilty in December to multiple charges and has been cooperating with the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan for months.
Rehn plans to show that Bankman-Fried installed his girlfriend at the top of his hedge fund, though he remained the one calling the shots behind the scenes.
Allan Joseph Bankman, father of FTX Co-Founder Sam Bankman-Fried, and Barbara Fried, mother of FTX Co-Founder Sam Bankman-Fried, arrive at court in New York, US, on Wednesday, Oct. 4, 2023.
Stephanie Keith | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Noticeably absent was the mention of Ellison’s co-CEO Sam Trabucco, who was a classmate of Bankman-Fried at MIT. Trabucco left FTX in Aug. 2022, and has stayed relatively under the radar.
Also central to the government’s case is the alleged coverup to hide Bankman-Fried’s crimes. Those tactics include backdating contracts and using encrypted messaging apps set to auto-delete to avoid a paper trail.
“This man stole billions of dollars from thousands of people,” Rein said, as he closed his statement.
The prosecution’s second witness was Adam Yedidia, who met Bankman-Fried in college at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The pair remained good friends.
Yedida detailed his experience working first as a trader at Alameda for two months in 2017, and later as a software engineer for FTX beginning in January 2021. He said he resigned from FTX the day before the exchange filed for bankruptcy after a fellow developer told him that Alameda had used FTX customer deposits to pay back creditors.
Speaking quickly and deliberately with an air of practiced nonchalance, Yedida testified that he hadn’t talked to Bankman-Fried or seen him in person since Nov. 2022.
When asked why he was appearing under an immunity order, Yedida said he was concerned that as an FTX developer, he “may have unwittingly written code that contributed to a crime.”
Prosecutors got through a half hour of testimony before breaking for the day. The government will continue its questioning of Yedida at 9:30 A.M. on Thursday.
FTX co-founder Gary Wang will also be taking the stand this week for the government.
Zevtron, ParkMobile, and Athena Partners Strategy Group are together supporting charging site owners and EV drivers affected by Shell Recharge’s shutdown of its EV charger software.
Shell Recharge is discontinuing its Shell Sky software in third-party commercial EV chargers in the US and Canada. It will service third-party commercial fleet EV chargers until April 30; after that, it’s lights out, leaving hundreds of EV charging stations across the US inoperable.
Zevtron, ParkMobile, and Athena Partners Strategy Group is deploying Zevtron’s white-label EV charging software across the former Shell Recharge network to restore full operational capacity to these chargers.
“Shell’s exit has left hundreds of chargers effectively stranded,” said Chris Mckenty, SVP of sales & marketing at Zevtron. “Our goal is to rapidly restore these stations to full functionality while enhancing their capabilities with flexible branding, seamless payment options, and improved management tools.”
ParkMobile will extend its capabilities to process EV charging sessions so users can both park and charge. “Integrating EV charging parking sessions into ParkMobile simplifies access for millions of drivers who already rely on our platform,” said Andy Harman, vice president of sales at ParkMobile.
Athena Partners Strategy Group will work closely with cities, businesses, and property owners to deploy the new solution efficiently. “We see this as a major opportunity to not only restore EV charging infrastructure but also improve it for the long term,” said Nick Stanton, managing partner of Athena Partners Strategy Group.
The partnership says it’s a “turnkey solution to ensure uninterrupted service, enhanced user experience, and improved revenue potential.”
For more information on transitioning Shell Recharge EV chargers to the Zevtron-powered network,
contact Chris Mckenty at cmckenty@zevtron.com
Read more: Shell Recharge exits the US EV charger software market
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Environment
Volkswagen ID.4 breaks into the top 5 best-selling EVs in the US after sales surged in January
The Volkswagen ID.4 was the third best-selling EV in the US last month, trailing only the Tesla Model Y and Model 3. Volkswagen’s electric SUV made a comeback after sales surged over 650% in January.
Volkswagen ID.4 was the third best-selling EV in January
Although ID.4 sales fell by 55% last year after Volkswagen halted production and deliveries in September due to a recall over faulty door handles, the EV made a triumphant return in 2025.
Volkswagen sold 4,979 ID.4’s in the US last month, up 653% from January 2024. To put it in perspective, VW only sold 646 ID.4 models in the fourth quarter and just over 17,000 in 2024. At this rate, ID.4 sales are on pace to reach nearly 60,000 by the end of 2025.
According to Cox Automotive’s latest EV Market Monitor report, the ID.4 was the third best-selling EV in the US last month, behind the Tesla Model Y and Model 3.
The Honda Prologue and Tesla Cybertruck rounded out the top five. Combined, the top five selling EV models accounted for 54% of total sales in the US last month.
| Rank | Model |
| 1. | Tesla Model Y |
| 2. | Tesla Model 3 |
| 3. | Volkswagen ID.4 |
| 4. | Tesla Cybertruck |
| 5. | Honda Prologue |
Over 102,200 electric vehicles were sold in the US in January, up nearly 30% from January 2024. Although sales were down from the record 132,392 sold in December 2024, a drop was expected over typical seasonal trends.
Tesla doesn’t provide a breakdown of US sales, so we will not know exact sales numbers until registration data is released.
Honda’s electric SUV continues to take the market by storm, with 3,744 Prologues sold in January. After delivering the first models last March, the Honda Prologue became the seventh best-selling EV in the US last year, with over 33,000 models sold.
Volkswagen announced the ID.4 was back on sale last month, with the “aim of re-instating the ID.4 to its prior position as one of the best-selling electric vehicles in the US and Canada.” It looks like it’s happening quicker than expected.
The new entry-level 2025 Volkswagen ID.4 RWD Pro model starts at $45,095, while the AWD Pro costs $48,995. Both are powered by an 82 kWh battery. Volkswagen said the 62 kWh battery will be available later this year. The larger battery provides an EPA-estimated range of up to 291 miles.
VW’s base models feature a gloss black grille, black roof rails, and a 12.9″ infotainment system with Android Auto and Apple CarPlay support. The AWD version has 20″ wheels, a heated windshield, and a tow hitch.
The ID.4 Pro S RWD starts at $50,195, and the AWD model has a sticker price of $54,095. It gets an added illuminated VW logo at the front and rear, premium LED projector headlights, a panoramic fixed glass roof, power tailgate, and more.
Volkswagen’s range-topping 2025 ID.4 Pro S Plus is only available in AWD and starts at $57,295. The Plus trim features 21-inch wheels, added exterior design elements, heated rear seats, a premium Harman Kardon audio system, and an Area View (an overhead view camera).
Both electric SUVs feature some of the biggest discounts on the market right now. To make room for 2025 models, VW is offering close-out prices on the 2024 ID.4, with leases starting as low as $189 per month. However, the Honda Prologue is hard to pass up, starting at just $209 per month. Ready to check them out for yourself? You can use our links below to find deals on the Volkswagen ID.4 and Honda Prologue in your area today.
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