Government lawyers have marshaled damaging testimony from multiple insiders, backed by documentary evidence, depicting the former cryptocurrency mogul as the architect of a scheme to siphon billions of dollars in customer funds toward lavish personal expenses and risky investments.
Bankman-Fried’s defense team signaled in their opening statement they would seek to present him to jurors as a well-intentioned entrepreneur whose business grew more quickly than his ability to adequately guard against the risks to it.
But prosecutors may have already succeeded in convincing jurors Bankman-Fried was a manipulative swindler and bully who ordered his top deputies to carry out one of the biggest financial frauds in history, experts said.
Prosecutors’ case arguably culminated with testimony last week from Caroline Ellison, the defendant’s sometimes-girlfriend and the chief executive of his crypto hedge fund, Alameda Research.
“It’s very difficult for the defense when you have a witness in the inner circle who has completely embraced that they have been involved with wrongdoing,” said Jordan Estes, a former federal prosecutor for the U.S. attorney’s office for Southern District of New York, which is prosecuting the case.
The defense lawyers may be seeking to drag out the process to give Bankman-Fried, who has been imprisoned in a Brooklyn jail since Kaplan revoked his bail in August, more time to digest the prosecution’s evidence, Silva said.
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