Bankman-Fried Disputes Government’s Witness-Tampering Claims

FTX Co-Founder Sam Bankman-Fried is denying government claims of witness tampering in his fraud case.

Mark Cohen, one of the attorneys leading Bankman-Fried’s defense, said Saturday (Jan. 28) that federal prosecutors are trying to paint his client “in the worst possible light,” Bloomberg News reported.

His comments came in the wake of a request Friday (Jan. 27) by the prosecutors for stricter bail sanctions on Bankman-Fried, out of concern that he might try to influence witnesses or destroy evidence in the case against him.

Pointing to what they said were “recent attempts to contact prospective witnesses,” prosecutors asked U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan to block Bankman-Fried from communicating with past employees of FTX or his Alameda Research hedge fund past or present without an attorney present, Reuters reported.

Cohen said Bankman-Fried’s use of the Signal communications platform to contact FTX US’ general counsel — a witness in the case — was “merely an innocuous attempt to offer assistance in FTX’s bankruptcy process and does not reflect misconduct that warrants the restriction the Government proposes here.”

Kaplan has given prosecutors until Jan. 30 to respond to a request by Bankman-Fried to modify bail conditions, and asked the government for a copy of Bankman-Fried’s communication with the FTX counsel, and warned attorneys that he “expects all counsel to abstain from pejorative characterizations of the actions and motives of their adversaries,” Bloomberg said.

Bankman-Fried, 30, has been living under house arrest with his parents since being charged last month with multiple counts of fraud and conspiracy stemming from FTX’s collapse.

He has maintained his innocence, both in court and in numerous public statements, like the one he published on Substack earlier this month.

“I didn’t steal funds, and I certainly didn’t stash billions away,” wrote Bankman-Fried, whose trial is set for this fall.

Bankman-Fried gave the crypto world a “villain” in 2022, PYMNTS wrote recently, noting that what it “needs for 2023 is a hero — or perhaps, a hero use case.”

Crypto offers a number of exciting benefits as a digital payment rail, the report argued. So far, however, there’s been limited regulatory oversight, as well as limited adoption by governments and top traditional finance organizations.

“Regulation will need to play an increasingly significant role in fostering trust in the crypto space and markets across the world,” PYMNTS wrote. “With enough top-down pressure, even a lump of coal can become a diamond.”