The government will not seek a second trial on temporarily dropped charges against the FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried, prosecutors told the federal judge on Friday.
All evidence has already been presented before the judge, and a second trial will not change the potential jail time for the disgraced cryptocurrency entrepreneur, the prosecutors said.
Mr. Bankman-Fried, 31, was convicted in early November of seven counts, including wire fraud, wire fraud conspiracy, and three conspiracy charges.
Bankman-Fried’s verdict came nearly one year after FTX filed for bankruptcy, erasing his once-$26 billion personal fortune in one of the fastest collapses of a major participant in U.S. financial markets.
He is scheduled to be sentenced on March 28. He could face more than 100 years in prison.
Bankman-Fried is expected to appeal his conviction.
He testified at trial that he made mistakes running FTX, including by not creating a team to oversee risk management, but did not steal customer funds.
Bankman-Fried also said he thought the borrowing of money from FTX by his crypto-focused hedge fund Alameda Research was permissible and that he did not realize how precarious their finances had become until shortly before both collapsed.
No Response From Bahamas
The suspended second trial is about the additional charges the government once suggested.Mr. Bankman-Fried was extradited in December 2022 from the Bahamas, where FTX was based, to face the seven earlier charges.
Last spring, prosecutors withdrew some charges they had brought against Bankman-Fried because the charges had not been approved as part of his extradition from the Bahamas in December 2022. The temporarily dropped charges included conspiracy to make unlawful campaign contributions, conspiracy to bribe foreign officials, and two other conspiracy counts. He also was charged with securities fraud and commodities fraud.
The prosecutors said then that the charges could be brought at a second trial to occur sometime in 2024, and they would still present evidence to the jury at the 2023 trial about the substance of the charges.
The FTX founder challenged the government that some of the new criminal charges against him are unrelated to the extradition deal with the Bahamian government. The Justice Department asked the Bahamas for a specialty waiver for the new charges.
However, the Bahamas didn’t respond to the request.
This also contributed to the decision not to pursue more charges against the FTX founder, the prosecutors explained.
“To date, The Bahamas has not agreed to waive the rule of specialty, and the Government does not have a timeline for when The Bahamas may respond to its request,” reads the letter.
“Accordingly, the Government does not intend to proceed to trial on the Additional Counts. Proceeding with sentencing in March 2024 without the delay that would be caused by a second trial would advance the public’s interest in a timely and just resolution of the case,” the prosecutors concluded.
