On the second day of Sam Bankman-Fried’s fraud trial this month, one of the lawyers for the cryptocurrency mogul delivered an emphatic message to the jury.
He lied repeatedly, they said, running roughshod over his top lieutenants and directing them to treat customer deposits as if FTX were a piggy bank.
The testimony has dealt a blow to Mr. Bankman-Fried’s “good faith” defense, which will be put to the test this week.
At a hearing on Wednesday, Mark Cohen, a defense lawyer, confirmed that Mr. Bankman-Fried, 31, would take the stand.
But given the prosecution’s success in building its case, legal experts said, it was all but inevitable that Mr. Bankman-Fried would want to tell the jury his side of the story.
Persons:
Sam Bankman, FTX, Bankman, Mark Cohen
Locations:
Manhattan