Sam Bankman-Fried’s fraud trial may have concluded with a conviction on all counts, but the FTX fraudster’s legal troubles are far from over as his political campaign donations are now in the spotlight.
The disgraced crypto czar, 31, could face another court appearance in March next year, which he is accused of paying $40 million in bribes to Chinese officials and conspiring to make more than 300 illegal political donations in the U.S.
A decision on whether the trial will go ahead will be made in February next year as prosecutors debate whether the costs of the trial are worth it.
The prosecutor accuses him of paying the $40 million in cryptocurrency to unfreeze accounts of his hedge fund, Alameda Research, that Chinese authorities froze in November 2021. The accounts contained more than $1 billion in cryptocurrency, U.S. prosecutors said.
Bankman-Fried is also suspected of orchestrating an illegal campaign donation scheme to buy influence in Washington DC, but charges related to his contributions were dropped in July on a technicality.
The U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan initially charged him with violating U.S. campaign finance laws, but dropped those charges after the Bahamas said it never intended to extradite Bankman-Fried to the U.S. on those charges to deliver.
Sam Bankman-Fried’s fraud trial may have concluded with a conviction on all counts, but the fraudster’s legal troubles are far from over
FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried meets Katy Perry, Bill Clinton, Tony Blair and Bahamas Prime Minister Philip Davis at the Crypto Bahamas event hosted by FTX
Former SEC Chairman Jay Clayton has said SBF was at the center of ‘one of the biggest campaign finance problems in history’
But former SEC Chairman Jay Clayton has said SBF was at the center of “one of the biggest campaign finance issues in history” and said not prosecuting him send the wrong message to future fraudsters.
“The question of whether or not we should bring anything in should also come down to the consequences of not pursuing something where many of the facts are already in the public domain,” he said. CNBC.
‘Many questions would be asked if this case were dismissed out of hand.
“How it’s prosecuted, whether it’s some kind of plea deal … the facts of what happened here should be on the table.
“Sam wasn’t the only one participating in this campaign finance scheme.”
Clayton said not prosecuting SBF would be a blow to the integrity of the U.S. election system.
“I’m not a scalper for scalp’s sake, but this is about election integrity and all that, that god is in the news in so many ways these days,” he said.
“I think it’s something that the American people need to see what happened here, what’s legal and what’s illegal.”
The Justice Department did not respond when asked whether they would charge the fraudster again for campaign finance violations.
Bankman-Fried benefited from a boom in the value of cryptocurrency, creating a net worth of $26 billion and making him an influential donor to mostly Democratic candidates.
He contributed money from his personal accounts and millions more from his companies FTX and Alameda Research.
Prosecutors say he spent more than $70 million on election campaigns in just 18 months, including personally giving at least $40 million ahead of the midterm elections, mostly to Democrats, as reported by TIME.
Caroline Ellison, former CEO of Alameda Research, claimed in her testimony that Bankman-Fried donated $10 million to Joe Biden’s campaign to gain “influence and recognition.”
Bankman-Fried was the party’s second-largest donor after George Soros, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
Democratic Senators Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire, Cory Booker of New Jersey and Republican Senators Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine all received money from Bankman-Fried.
While public records show he has donated almost exclusively to Democrats, SBF has said he has also donated to Republicans in untraceable donations. If that’s true, he has invested more than $80 million in the 2022 midterm elections.
Bankman-Fried appeared on a panel with former President Clinton and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair
Bankman-Fried had a scheduled meeting with New York Governor Kathy Hochul and also planned a dinner with New York Mayor Eric Adams in March 2022.
“All my Republican donations were shady,” he told YouTuber Tiffany Fong. “The reason was not for regulatory reasons, but because reporters freak out if you donate to the Republicans. They’re all super liberal, and I didn’t want that fight.”
The White House has not said whether Biden will return the fraudster’s donations, but some candidates have donated the money to charity, returned it or are waiting for the Justice Department to determine how to handle it.
While Bankman-Fried was trying to gain influence in DC, a company associated with him bought a mansion in the capital for $3 million.
The fraudster met with four Biden officials this year before the collapse of his FTX empire and his arrest in the Bahamas.
He held conversations with senior White House adviser Steve Ricchetti at least three times in 2022. Bloomberg reported that the meetings focused on the crypto industry and exchanges, and not politics.
Bankman-Fried was set to speak with former President Bill Clinton, New York Governor Kathy Hochul and Yasir Al Rumayyan, the head of the Saudi Public Investment Fund, shortly before his crypto empire collapsed in November 2022.
His trial revealed that he met Clinton at the New York Hilton hotel in Midtown Manhattan in September 2022, about two months before FTX collapsed.
That same month, calendar invites showed he had an appointment with Al Rumayyan at the Pierre hotel in New York.
The Washington DC mansion was purchased by Bankman-Fried’s brother Gabe as part of his nonprofit organization Guarding Against Pandemics
The month before he met Clinton, he arranged a meeting with Hochul and also planned a dinner with New York Mayor Eric Adams in March 2022.
Bankman-Fried had also appeared on a panel with Clinton and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair at a crypto conference in the Bahamas in April 2022. Tickets started from around $3,000 each.
Stars including Tom Brady, Katy Perry and Orlando Bloom were also in attendance at the event, and footage showed the then billionaire happily partying with the A-listers.
Bankman-Fried was convicted of fraud on Thursday for stealing at least $10 billion from customers and investors.
FTX suffer a catastrophic collapse in November 2022, leaving customers with approximately $10 billion out of pocket. The saga shocked the markets and tarnished SBF’s once godly reputation within the crypto industry.
The fraudster’s parents, Stanford law professors Joseph Bankman and Barbara Fried, sat in the front row of the courtroom and hugged each other as soon as the verdict was read.
Bankman-Fried will be sentenced on March 28, but his attorney, Mark Cohen, stressed they will continue to vigorously fight the charges.