Sam Bankman-Fried has one more shot at avoiding prison as criminal trial set to wrap up
FTX Founder Sam Bankman-Fried arrives at Manhattan Federal Court for a court appearance in New York, United States on June 15, 2023.
Fatih Aktas/ | Anadolu Agency | Getty Images
Sam Bankman-Fried, who pleaded not guilty to criminal fraud charges tied to the collapse of his crypto empire, has one last chance to get a Manhattan jury to believe him.
After two days on the witness stand, Bankman-Fried is set to wrap up his testimony on Tuesday. All that’s left is a couple more hours of cross-examination by prosecutors, followed by a redirect examination by Bankman-Fried’s team. After that, the defense plans to rest its case.
The roughly four-week trial has largely consisted of government-supported testimony from Bankman-Fried’s former close friends, confidants and top executives at crypto exchange FTX and sister hedge fund Alameda Research. They all singled out Bankman-Fried as the mastermind of a scheme to use FTX customer money to fund everything from venture investments and a high-priced condo in the Bahamas to covering Alameda’s crypto losses after the market crashed last year.
Bankman-Fried’s defense failed to land any significant blows in cross-examining the prosecution’s key witnesses, including Caroline Ellison, the defendant’s ex-girlfriend and the former head of Alameda. When it was defense attorney Mark Cohen’s chance to take the lead, he only called three witnesses, with the bulk of his case riding on Bankman-Fried’s ability to convince the jury of his story.
The 31-year-old former billionaire, whose crypto businesses spiraled into bankruptcy over the course of a few days last November, told jurors in his first day on the stand on Friday that he didn’t commit fraud and that he thought FTX’s outside expenditures, like paying for the naming rights at a sports arena, came out of company profits.
When asked by Cohen on Friday morning if he defrauded anyone, Bankman-Fried said, “No, I did not.” His lawyer then asked if he took customer money, to which Bankman-Fried said, “No.”
FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried is questioned by prosecutor Danielle Sassoon during his fraud trial over the collapse of the bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange, before U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan at federal court in New York City, U.S., October 30, 2023 in this courtroom sketch.
Jane Rosenberg | Reuters
Bankman-Fried, the son of two Stanford University legal scholars, faces seven criminal counts, including wire fraud, securities fraud and money laundering, that could land him in prison for life if he’s convicted. His argument to the jury is that he made mistakes, like not having a risk management team in place, which led to “significant oversights.” But when it comes to the central question — what happened to billions of dollars in customer money — Bankman-Fried doesn’t offer any clear explanations and claims to not really know.
Ellison, who was one of several witnesses cooperating with the government on a plea deal, had a more precise answer, in her Oct. 10 appearance on the stand.
“We ultimately took around $14 billion, some of which we were able to pay back,” she said. “I sent balance sheets to lenders at the direction of Sam that incorrectly stated Alameda’s assets and liabilities.”
Ellison said Alameda siphoned several billion dollars from FTX customers and that Bankman-Fried had not only set up a system to steal the funds but also directed Ellison and others to use customer funds to repay loans in the ballpark of $10 billion.
Bankman-Fried testified that he wasn’t aware of the amount Alameda was borrowing from FTX, or its theoretical max. As long as Alameda’s net asset value was positive and the scale of borrowing was reasonable, increasing its line of credit so that Alameda could keep filling orders was fine, he said. Earlier testimony from former engineering director Nishad Singh and co-founder Gary Wang suggested the line of credit was raised to $65 billion, a number Bankman-Fried said he wasn’t aware of.
Prosecutors entered corroborating materials, including encrypted Signal messages and other internal documents that appear to show Bankman-Fried orchestrating the spending of FTX customer money.
‘Average level sports fan’
Bankman-Fried tried to explain away some of those expenses. For example, the naming rights to Miami’s basketball arena would cost $10 million a year, or roughly 1% of revenue, and deliver returns well in excess of that because of the brand awareness it would create for even an “average level sports fan,” he said. He added that he thought the money was coming from revenue from the exchange and returns from venture investments, as opposed to customer funds.
Similarly, Bankman-Fried testified that he believed the lavish Bahamas properties were being paid for with FTX operating cash that came from revenue and venture investments. He said having available property to rent was a necessary incentive if the company wanted to poach developers from Facebook and Google.
On Monday, Bankman-Fried’s strategy shifted to one of blaming many of his former top lieutenants, who’d previously testified against him.
Caroline Ellison, former chief executive officer of Alameda Research LLC, leaves Manhattan Federal Court after testifying during the trial of FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, on October 10, 2023 in New York City.
Michael M. Santiago | Getty Images
When it came to Ellison, Bankman-Fried said that he repeatedly tried to make sure she was implementing sufficient hedging strategies at Alameda to ensure the fund didn’t collapse under the weight of tumbling crypto prices.
Bankman-Fried testified about several conversations on the matter he’d had with Ellison between June and September 2022, and said he was notably concerned about the decline in Alameda’s net asset value from $40 billion the prior year to $10 billion.
The market had already dropped 70% and if it fell another 50%, he was afraid the firm would be insolvent, Bankman-Fried told the jury.
“She started crying,” Bankman-Fried said, regarding Ellison’s reaction when he told her that. “She agreed.”
Bankman-Fried said Ellison offered to resign over the matter, but the defendant testified he wasn’t focused on blame or past failures but rather making sure that Alameda remained solvent.
In September, he checked in again with Ellison about the hedging activity, Bankman-Fried testified. Ellison told him Alameda had hedged. He asked about the scale of the trades and said his instinct was that they could have been twice the size. After Ellison sent him spreadsheets about the trades, she agreed there was more room to hedge and she did so, Bankman-Fried said.
In walking through FTX’s failure, Bankman-Fried discussed the role played by Singh, who was also called as a government witness. Bankman-Fried highlighted Singh’s personal financial problems, and said he was suicidal with a therapist on call 24/7 to watch over him. Bankman-Fried said he was trying to comfort Singh about his loans and expenses in part to prevent him from hurting himself.
In describing the swift downfall of FTX, Bankman-Fried said that customer withdrawals had quickly increased from $50 million a day to $1 billion a day. He said it was like a run on the bank and he was very concerned since the only way to withdraw all customer funds was to liquidate every open margin trade.
Bankman-Fried defended his tweets from early November that he said were designed to ease customer concerns.
Regarding the “assets are fine” tweet he wrote during the panic, he said he thought Alameda’s net asset value was roughly $10 billion and that FTX didn’t have a hole in its balance sheet.
“My view was the exchange was OK and there was no hole in the assets,” he told the court.
Shorter answers
In testimony later on Monday, Bankman-Fried was faced with cross-examination as the government had its turn with the defendant. Far from the more descriptive answers Bankman-Fried provided in response to Cohen’s questions, the prosecutors inquiries were met with a lot of quick replies like “Yep” and “I don’t recall.”
In some instances, his answers were directly followed with a government exhibit, such as a tweet, interview transcript, congressional testimony or email, intended to dispute his answer.
For example, Assistant U.S. Attorney Danielle Sassoon asked Bankman-Fried if he assured people that Alameda played by the same rules as others on the FTX exchange. Bankman-Fried said he wasn’t sure. The government followed by showing a tweet from him directly addressing the topic along with an email in which he wrote that Alameda’s account is like everyone else’s.
After the government wraps its questioning on Tuesday and the defense gets its shot at redirect, all that’s left on the docket is two witness rebuttals from the prosecution. One will come from an FBI data analyst and the other from an employee at investment firm Apollo, which had been in talks to help finance an FTX rescue.
At that point, Bankman-Fried’s fate will lie in the hands of the 12 jurors who have spent the past four weeks sitting a few feet away from the defendant in a lower Manhattan courtroom.
If you are having suicidal thoughts or are in distress, contact the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline at 988 for support and assistance from a trained counselor.
— CNBC’s Dawn Giel contributed to this report
WATCH: Sam Bankman-Fried walks jury through final days of FTX
The Amazon Prime logo is displayed on Amazon delivery trucks in Richmond, California, June 21, 2023.
Justin Sullivan | Getty Images
Department of Justice officials on Tuesday charged members or associates of an Armenian organized crime ring with stealing more than $83 million worth of cargo from Amazon by posing as legitimate truck drivers and siphoning off goods destined for the company’s warehouses.
Since at least 2021, at least four people linked to the crime ring carried out a scheme across California to steal truckloads of merchandise, ranging from smart TVs and GE icemakers to SharkNinja vacuums and air fryers, the DOJ alleged.
“At present, Amazon is plagued by recurring thefts of its shipments, which is commonly referred to as ‘cargo theft,'” the complaint says.
Amazon has ramped up its efforts to track and shut down fraudulent, deceptive and illegal activities on its sprawling online store. Eliminating stolen goods is particularly challenging. CNBC reported in 2023 that Amazon suspended dozens of third-party merchants it alleged were selling stolen goods, though many of those sellers claimed they were unknowingly caught in the scheme, putting their businesses at risk of survival.
Amazon isn’t the only retailer afflicted by cargo theft. Experts told CNBC cargo theft-related losses are estimated at close to $1 billion or more a year.
In its complaint, the DOJ said the alleged fraudsters operated four transport carriers — AK Transportation, NBA Holdings, Belman Transport and Markos Transportation — that would obtain contracted freight routes from Amazon Relay, an application used by truckers to obtain work, also referred to as loads.
Each trucker is assigned a load for pickup from a manufacturer’s warehouse to be dropped off at an Amazon facility. Instead, the groups would divert from their designated routes, take a portion of the goods off the trucks and resell them or gift them to associates, prosecutors allege.
In some cases, the “self-styled carriers” would complete their deliveries at an Amazon warehouse several days after they were expected to show up, according to the complaint.
DOJ officials seized the alleged fraudsters’ iPhones and found photos and videos of warehouses lined with boxes of crockpots, Keurig coffee machines, keratin shampoo, Weber grills and other goods.
Amazon teams cooperated with DOJ officials in their investigation, including sharing information about the stolen goods, and details of the alleged fraudsters’ accounts on its online marketplace.
Representatives from Amazon didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
DOJ officials linked the defendants to a litany of other alleged crimes, including attempted murder, kidnapping, illegal firearm possession and health-care fraud. Several of the 13 defendants are expected to appear in a Los Angeles district court on Tuesday and Wednesday, while one of the defendants appeared in a court in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, on Tuesday and was detained.
Thomas Fuller | SOPA Images | Lightrocket | Getty Images
Apple approved the Epic Games title Fortnite on Tuesday, returning the first-person shooter game to the App Store in the U.S., five years after its removal.
Fortnite was kicked off the App Store in 2020 after Epic updated its game over the web to take payments directly, instead of through Apple’s in-app payment mechanism, which takes fees up to 30%. The move angered Apple and kicked off a years-long legal battle.
Last month, Epic scored a victory in court, when a judge ruled that Apple wasn’t allowed to charge a commission when apps link out for payment, or dictate whether the links look like buttons. Epic said last week that it had submitted Fortnite to the U.S. App Store. To return, Fortnite had to pass App Review, Apple’s process in which new apps or updates are reviewed by Apple employees to ensure they work and adhere to the company’s guidelines.
Apple had dragged out its approval process for the app since May 9, when Epic submitted it to Apple. Last week, Epic filed a legal challenge, and on Monday, a judge said that Apple had to explain why Fortnite hadn’t been approved yet or come to a resolution with Epic over the game’s status.
Apple is appealing the latest court order, and looking to get a pause enabling it to roll back changes the company has already made to the App Store in response. An Apple representative didn’t immediately return a request for comment.
Last month’s ruling led major app makers such as Amazon and Spotify to change their apps to accommodate links to buy content. For example, users can now buy Kindle books inside the Kindle app on an iPhone.
Amazon and Spotify were able to update existing apps that had already been approved with changes enabled by last month’s order. After Epic sued Apple, the iPhone maker revoked Epic’s developer account in addition to booting Fortnite.
Epic was able to get a European developer account and now offers Fortnite in Europe through a third-party app store under the Digital Markets Act, which went into effect last year. IPhone users can also play Fortnite through cloud gaming services. But even in Europe, Apple tried to terminate Epic’s account before backing off, Epic said.
The fees that Apple takes from the App Store are an increasingly important part of Apple’s business. They’re reported in Apple’s Services business, which also includes advertising, AppleCare warranties, payments, and subscription offerings such as Apple TV+. Apple reported nearly $27 billion in services revenue during the March quarter.
A Waymo self-driving car, seen with a driver, stops at a red light outside the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on Friday, March 31, 2025.
Bill Clark | CQ-Roll Call, Inc. | Getty Images
Waymo co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana told CNBC on Tuesday that the Alphabet-owned ride-hailing company has reached 10 million trips, doubling in the past five months.
“These are all paid trips, and they represent people who are really integrating Waymo Driver into their everyday lives,” said Mawakana, speaking at the Google I/O developer conference. The 10 million figure includes rides in Austin, Los Angeles, San Francisco and the Phoenix area.
Waymo is delivering more than 250,000 paid robotaxi rides a week, Alphabet said in its April earnings report. On Monday, Waymo said it had won approval to expand its autonomous ride-hailing service to more parts of the San Francisco Bay Area, including San Jose.
The robotaxi company is part of Alphabet’s “Other Bets” unit. Revenue in the overall category fell 9% in the first quarter from a year earlier to $450 million, and operating loss grew from to $1.23 billion from $1.02 billion a year ago.
While those figures include a number of businesses, Mawakana confirmed that Waymo is not yet profitable but that the company is “super focused on building a sustainable business.”
“We’re proving out that it can be a profitable business,” she said. “There’s a path to profitability.”
Waymo faces potential competition from Tesla, which has promised to launch its robotaxi service in Austin next month. Tesla CEO Elon Musk told CNBC on Tuesday that the plan was still on track, and that the company will start with about 10 vehicles and rapidly expand to thousands if the debut goes well with no incidents.
Musk said Tesla aims to bring its robotaxis to Los Angeles and San Francisco following the planned Austin launch. He has previously claimed Tesla’s “generalized” approach to robotaxis is more ambitious than Waymo’s. Tesla primarily relies on camera-based systems and computer vision instead of using sophisticated sensors including lidar and radar in its vehicles.
Mawakana said that Waymo has taken what it views as the “safest path.”
“There’s probably a lot of ways it can be done, but we’re the only ones that have done it,” she said. “We’ve been doing it 24 hours a day for almost five years. And so to us, it’s really important to focus on safety, not focus on safety and then cost — not cost and then safety.”
WATCH: Waymo co-CEO announces 10 million autonomous trips milestone
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