Bankman-Fried set to enter not guilty plea in FTX fraud case
NEW YORK: Sam Bankman-Fried is expected on Tuesday (Jan 3) to enter a plea of not guilty to criminal charges that he cheated investors in his now-bankrupt FTX cryptocurrency exchange.Bankman-Fried is accused of looting billions of dollars in FTX customer deposits to support his Alameda Research hedge fund, buy real estate and make millions of dollars in political contributions, in what prosecutors have called a fraud of epic proportions.He is scheduled to appear at 2pm EST (3am, Singapore time) before United States District Judge Lewis Kaplan in Manhattan.
His lawyers earlier on Tuesday told Kaplan that Bankman-Fried's parents, who co-signed his US$250 million bond in December, have been harassed and threatened.A person familiar with the matter told Reuters last week that Bankman-Fried would plead not guilty.A lawyer for Bankman-Fried did not reply to a request for comment.
It is not unusual for criminal defendants to initially plead not guilty. Defendants are free to change their plea at a later date.Bankman-Fried was extradited last month from the Bahamas, where he lived and where the exchange was based.Since his release on bond, Bankman-Fried has been subject to electronic monitoring and required to live with his parents, Joseph Bankman and Barbara Fried, both professors at Stanford Law School in California.In a letter, Bankman-Fried's lawyers asked Kaplan to shield the names of two remaining sureties for the bond from public disclosure, citing the "steady stream of threatening correspondence, including a desire that they suffer physical harm" that his parents had received in recent weeks.The lawyers, Mark Cohen and Christian Everdell, said the concern that additional sureties would face similar treatment overcame any
