At a Manhattan courthouse on Thursday, FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried pleaded not guilty to five additional charges brought by U.S. prosecutors related to November's collapse of FTX. The charges included conspiracy to commit money laundering, unlawful political contributions, and bribing a Chinese official, a new allegation filed by prosecutors earlier this week.
While Bankman-Fried was expected to plead not guilty, the arraignment hearing was notable for details provided by Nicolas Roos, an assistant U.S. attorney. Speaking before Judge Lewis Kaplan, Roose revealed that his team, along with FBI investigators, are in possession of seven devices from Bankman-Fried and cooperating witnesses, including cellphones and laptops, and are poring over 6 million pages of evidence.
After Bankman-Fried's arrest at the hands of Bahamian authorities in December, the U.S. Department of Justice unsealed eight charges against the disgraced crypto founder related to the alleged misappropriation of customer funds from the crypto exchange FTX for the purposes of its affiliated trading firm, Alameda Research.
At an initial arraignment hearing Jan. 3, Bankman-Fried pleaded not guilty to all eight charges, with prosecutors informing the judge of their ongoing discovery process, which entails collecting evidence and sharing it with the defense team.
Much of that process has not been publicly known, but it's resulted in additional charges against Bankman-Fried, including four in February related to money laundering, as well as Bankman-Fried's alleged "straw donor" scheme to illegally funnel FTX funds as political donations through employees. Bankman-Fried, along with top lieutenants such as former co-CEO Ryan Salame and former director of engineering Nishad Singh, all were prodigious donors. Singh pleaded guilty to criminal charges at the end of February.
The 13th charge, filed by prosecutors on Tuesday, alleges that Bankman-Fried bribed at least one Chinese official with upwards of $40 million in cryptocurrency in an attempt to unfreeze $1 billion of Alameda funds targeted by the Chinese government, a violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.
Because Bankman-Fried had still not been arraigned on the five additional charges, he appeared before Kaplan on Thursday, where he pleaded not guilty. His lawyer, Mark Cohen, added that Bankman-Fried did not acknowledge that he could be tried on the new charges, a procedural issue that will likely be settled at a future conference. With prosecutors nearing the end of the discovery process—Roos shared that his team plans to have all of the seized devices cataloged by early April—additional charges are possible.
Bankman-Fried's trial is scheduled for October.
