The 30-year-old entrepreneur, who’s out on a $US250 million ($371 million) bail package deal, was arraigned in federal court docket in Manhattan on Tuesday. His lawyer Mark Cohen entered the plea of not responsible to all counts.
The choose set a trial date for October 2.
Bankman-Fried, as soon as hailed as the general public face of the crypto business, was indicted on two counts of wire fraud and 6 counts of conspiracy-related prices final month for his function in what one federal prosecutor referred to as “a fraud of epic proportions”.
Authorities have accused Bankman-Fried of stealing buyer funds from FTX to cowl loans taken out by Alameda Research, FTX’s affiliated crypto hedge fund.
They additionally say he used these funds to make investments in different corporations and donate to campaigns of politicians from each events to affect public coverage.
In public statements following FTX’s chapter submitting in November, Bankman-Fried has insisted that he did not commit fraud and was unaware that buyer funds have been getting used improperly.
Two senior executives from Bankman-Fried’s crypto companies — Gary Wang, the co-founder of FTX, and Caroline Ellison, who served as Alameda’s CEO — have pleaded responsible to a number of legal prices and are cooperating with federal prosecutors.
Ellison apologised whereas getting into her plea final month, telling the court docket that she “agreed with Mr Bankman-Fried and others to not publicly disclose the true nature of the relationship between Alameda and FTX, including Alameda’s credit arrangement”.
As a part of his launch, Bankman-Fried is beneath home arrest at his dad and mom’ residence in Palo Alto, California.
He is carrying a monitoring gadget and has surrendered his passport.
He might resist 115 years in jail if convicted on all prices.
Last month, a US choose launched him on a $371 million bond in his first look on American soil since his arrest within the Bahamas, the place he lived and ran his companies.
Bankman-Fried’s dad and mom, each regulation professors at Stanford who co-signed his bond, have “become the target of intense media scrutiny, harassment, and threats,” defence legal professionals wrote in a letter to the court docket, whereas asking to redact the names of two different co-signers, generally known as “sureties”.
“There is serious cause for concern that the two additional sureties would face similar intrusions on their privacy as well as threats and harassment if their names appear unredacted on their bonds or their identities are otherwise publicly disclosed,” the letter states.
‘Old-fashioned embezzlement’
Prosecutors allege that Bankman-Fried orchestrated “one of the biggest financial frauds in American history,” stealing billions of {dollars} from FTX prospects to cowl losses at its sister hedge fund, Alameda Research.
FTX and Alameda each filed for chapter in December after traders rushed to drag their deposits from the trade, sparking a liquidity disaster and triggering contagion throughout the crypto business.
FTX’s new CEO, John Ray III, who made his identify overseeing the liquidation of Enron within the early 2000s, stated in a congressional listening to that buyer funds deposited on the FTX website have been commingled with funds at Alameda, which made a variety of speculative, high-risk bets.
Ray described the scenario on the two corporations as “old-fashioned embezzlement” by the hands of a small group of “grossly inexperienced and unsophisticated individuals.”
Separately on Tuesday, US regulators issued an announcement warning market contributors concerning the explicit dangers posed by the cryptocurrency market due to the prevalence of fraud, volatility, misrepresentation and defective danger administration.
“It is important that risks related to the crypto-asset sector that cannot be mitigated or controlled do not migrate to the banking system,” learn the assertion, issued collectively by the Federal Reserve, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.
