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☆ U.S. says FTX founder Bankman-Fried needs limits on communications, asset access
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-30 | by ( Jonathan Stempel | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +3 min

They argued those assets were "vulnerable to exploitation and in need of protection from the defendant." Mark Cohen and Christian Everdell, who represent Bankman-Fried, did not immediately respond to requests for comment. In Monday's letter, prosecutors called the message an effort to "improperly influence" the general counsel, no matter how benign it might seem. Bankman-Fried's lawyers have said their client was trying simply to provide assistance to the general counsel, and has not been not using the auto-delete feature. They also proposed that Bankman-Fried not be allowed to talk with select colleagues, including former Alameda chief Caroline Ellison, former FTX technology chief Zixiao "Gary" Wang and former FTX engineering chief Nishad Singh.

☆ Leaked Oracle org chart shows the top execs reporting to Larry Ellison after cloud leader Don Johnson's abrupt departure
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-30 | by ( Ashley Stewart | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

Oracle's internal org chart shows the eight executives who report to chairman and CTO Larry Ellison. An internal Oracle organization chart shows the executives left reporting to cofounder Larry Ellison after cloud and health leader Don Johnson left the company. Johnson spent four years running Oracle's cloud business, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, before stepping back in the last year. Larry Ellison Executive chairman and chief technology officer Andy Mendelsohn Executive vice president, Oracle Database Clay Magouyrk Executive vice president, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Edward Screven Executive vice president and chief corporate architect Jeff Henley Executive vice chairman Juan Loaiza Executive vice president, Mission Critical Database Technologies Steve Miranda Executive vice president, Applications Development T.K. Anand Executive vice president, Analytics Maddie Giammona Executive assistantDo you work at Oracle or have insight to share?

☆ A judge ordered the unsealing of Sam Bankman-Fried's 2 anonymous bail sponsors — but says they have a week to appeal
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-30 | by ( Jacob Shamsian | Sindhu Sundar | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

A federal judge agreed to unseal the names of Samuel Bankman-Fried's two anonymous bail sponsors. The judge pointed out that the sponsors waded into a highly public criminal case. "The non-parental bail sureties have entered voluntarily into a highly publicized criminal proceeding by signing the individual bonds," Kaplan wrote in his ruling on Monday. According to the rules of their bail agreement, one of those additional sponsors couldn't be a family member, according to court filings. A group of media organizations, including Insider, argued that the public had a right to know who was bankrolling Bankman-Fried's bail.

A shooting in the Beverly Crest neighborhood of Los Angeles early Saturday morning has claimed the lives of at least three people and injured four, according to police. Beverly Crest is approximately 2 miles north of Beverly Hills. Calls about a multi-victim shooting in the 2700 block of Ellison Drive came in around 2:30 a.m, the Los Angeles Police Department said in a statement. The shooting took place during a party, NBC Los Angeles reported. Police are asking anyone with information on the shooting to come forward.

Bankman-Fried, 30, has been free on $250 million bond since pleading not guilty to charges of fraud in the looting of billions of dollars from the now-bankrupt FTX. But in a letter to U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan in Manhattan, Bankman-Fried's lawyers said prosecutors sprung the "overbroad" bail conditions without revealing that both sides had been discussing bail over the last week. "Rather than wait for any response from the defense, the government sandbagged the process, filing this letter at 6:00 p.m. on Friday evening," Bankman-Fried's lawyers wrote. They said a Signal ban isn't necessary because Bankman-Fried is not using the auto-delete feature, and concern he might is "unfounded." The lawyers also asked to remove a bail condition preventing Bankman-Fried from accessing FTX, Alameda or cryptocurrency assets, saying there was "no evidence" he was responsible for earlier alleged unauthorized transactions.

☆ U.S. seeks tighter bail for FTX founder Bankman-Fried to prevent tampering
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-28 | by ( Jonathan Stempel | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

Citing Bankman-Fried's "recent attempts to contact prospective witnesses," prosecutors asked U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan to ban Bankman-Fried from communicating with current or former employees of FTX or his Alameda Research hedge fund, other than family, unless a lawyer is present. They also asked that Bankman-Fried not use Signal or other encrypted call and messaging applications, though he could still communicate through text messages, email and the phone. In Friday's letter, prosecutors cited a Signal message on Jan. 15 from Bankman-Fried to "Witness-1," the general counsel of the FTX U.S. affiliate. Bankman-Fried expressed interest in having a "constructive relationship" or "at least vet things with each other." In seeking to keep Bankman-Fried off Signal, prosecutors said he had in 2021 directed that many Signal and Slack communications be autodeleted within 30 days.

☆ Department of Justice calls to bar Sam Bankman-Fried from contacting FTX employees after allegations of witness tampering
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-28 | by ( Aaron Mcdade | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

The DOJ asked the court to stop him from contacting employees via encrypted apps like Signal. Prosecutors requested that the conditions of Bankman-Fried's bond be changed so he is no longer allowed to contact employees, who the DOJ considers potential witnesses against the former executive, without a lawyer present. While witness tampering is often associated with threats or intimidation, the DOJ's letter notes that conversations can also be deemed as interference in an investigation. "Efforts by the defendant to improve his relationship with potential witnesses that may testify against him may itself constitute witness tampering," the letter states. "Were the defendant to 'vet' his version of relevant events with potential witnesses, that might have the effect of discouraging witnesses from testifying in a manner contrary to the defendant's narrative."

☆ U.S. securities regulator probes investment advisers over crypto custody -sources
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-27 | by ( Chris Prentice | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +3 min

NEW YORK, Jan 26 (Reuters) - The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is probing registered investment advisers over whether they are meeting rules around custody of client crypto assets, three sources with knowledge of the inquiry told Reuters. SEC enforcement staff are asking investment advisers for details around what the firms did to assess custody for platforms including FTX, one of the sources said. By law, investment advisers cannot have custody of client funds or securities if they do not meet certain requirements to protect the assets. "This is an obvious compliance issue for investment advisers. Under Democratic leadership, the SEC has made crypto a priority area for enforcement, nearly doubling the size of its crypto team last year.

☆ SBF's mom, Caroline Ellison, and former FTX executives are not cooperating with the investigation into the disgraced crypto exchange, filing says
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-27 | by ( Jennifer Sor | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

SBF, his mom, his brother, and key executives in his crypto empire aren't cooperating in the FTX bankruptcy case, according to a recent court filing. FTX lawyers said several key insiders have not responded or declined to give requested information related to the collapsed exchange. But discussions with Bankman-Fried's father and another FTX executive have been making progress, the filing said. In particular, former Alameda CEO Caroline Ellison and FTX co-founder Gary Wang have declined to give FTX's lawyers requested information. However, discussions with Bankman-Fried's father Joseph Bankman and former FTX COO Zhe Wang have been making progress, the filing said.

☆ Prosecutors say Sam Bankman-Fried’s contact with FTX’s ex-general counsel is ‘suggestive’ of witness tampering
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-27 | by ( Kara Scannell | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +3 min

CNN —Federal prosecutors said FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried contacted the former general counsel of the crypto trading platform earlier this month in a move they say may constitute witness tampering. They also want the judge to block Bankman-Fried from using any encrypted communication devices out of concerns he will obstruct the ongoing investigation. “Efforts by the defendant to improve his relationship with potential witnesses that may testify against him may itself constitute witness tampering,” prosecutors wrote. Witness-1 participated in Signal and Slack communications with the defendant and a small group of company insiders during the relevant events of November 2022. Several potential witnesses told prosecutors of “incriminating conversations” they had with Bankman-Fried over the messaging platforms that were deleted because Bankman-Fried set the programs to auto-delete after 30 days.

☆ Sam Bankman-Fried tried to influence witness through Signal, DOJ alleges
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-27 | by ( Rohan Goswami | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +2 min

Federal prosecutors are attempting to bar indicted FTX co-founder Sam Bankman-Fried from using encrypted messaging software, citing efforts that may "constitute witness tampering," according to a letter filed in Manhattan federal court Friday. Bankman-Fried reached out to the "current General Counsel of FTX US who may be a witness at trial," prosecutors said. Federal prosecutors allege that Bankman-Fried's request suggests an effort to influence the witness's testimony, and that Bankman-Fried's effort to improve his relationship with Miller "may itself constitute witness tampering." In restricting Bankman-Fried's access to Signal and other encrypted messaging platforms, the government cites a need to "prevent obstruction of justice." Federal prosecutors claim that Bankman-Fried directed Alameda and FTX through Slack and Signal, and ordered his employees set communications to "autodelete after 30 days or less."

☆ Leaked Oracle emails show a key exec is leaving amid more layoffs and changes to its advertising business
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-26 | by ( Ashley Stewart | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Oracle Advertising laid off another round of employees this month and the unit's chief product officer, Derek Wise, is leaving, according to internal emails viewed by Insider. Previously called Oracle Data Cloud, Oracle renamed its cloud-based advertising and customer relationship management software to Oracle Advertising and Customer Experience. Oracle Advertising now falls under Edward Screven, Oracle's executive vice president and chief corporate architect who reports to founder and CTO Larry Ellison. "Over the past few days we have had to make some very tough choices about the future of Oracle Advertising," Vlaovic wrote in a Jan. 17 email. "Our strategy in Oracle Advertising moving forward is to be more focused and be able to self-fund our growth."

Musk ended three days on the stand defending against claims that he defrauded investors by tweeting on Aug. 7, 2018, that he had "funding secured" to take Tesla private. The trial in San Francisco federal court is testing whether the world's second-richest person can be held liable for his sometimes impulsive use of Twitter. Musk, however, acknowledged he did not have binding agreements with investors, leaving it to the jury to decide if he misled shareholders. The Saudi fund did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment. But when questioned by Nicholas Porritt, a lawyer for the investors, Musk said he did not have binding agreements for financing from any interested party.

☆ Oracle health cloud leader Don Johnson — once considered for co-CEO — has abruptly resigned, insiders say
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-24 | by ( Ashley Stewart | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Oracle executive Don Johnson is abruptly leaving his key post, insiders say. Johnson was at one point named by Larry Ellison as a potential contender for Oracle co-CEO. Don Johnson — the former Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) boss once named by founder and CTO Larry Ellison as a potential contender for co-CEO — abruptly left his latest post, two people familiar with the matter said. Johnson came to Oracle from Amazon Web Services in 2014 and was tapped by Ellison in 2018 to run the company's all-important cloud unit, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. About a year later, Johnson stepped down from the cloud and AI organization, according to another email viewed by Insider.

☆ Retail CEO crisis: why the industry's top job is suddenly the hardest to fill
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-23 | by ( Matthew Kish | Avery Hartmans | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +8 min

It's the surest sign yet of a crisis facing the retail industry. Supply chains got snarled, shoppers stopped visiting stores, and stimulus payments spiked demand, each making it difficult to measure how business was doing. Then stimulus payments sent demand for everything from sneakers to home goods spiking while supply chains snarled. And just when supply chains started to sort themselves out, inflation hit, and shoppers started to scale back spending. Retail CEOs need 'peripheral vision'Workers at Starbucks stores and Amazon warehouses across the country have pushed to unionize, with many calling out the pay disparity between front-line workers and top executives.

☆ Sam Bankman-Fried's 2 mysterious bail sponsors ponied up a total of $700,000 to get the alleged fraudster out of jail
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-20 | by ( Jacob Shamsian | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

In addition to his parents, Sam Bankman-Fried has two anonymous bail sponsors keeping him out of jail. In addition to the anonymous bail sponsors, Bankman-Fried's parents used their $4 million Palo Alto home as collateral to help secure the bond. In court, prosecutors estimated he defrauded more than 1 million customers. Earlier this month, several news organizations, including Insider, asked Kaplan to unseal the identities of the two anonymous bail sponsors, arguing it was in the public interest. A representative for Bankman-Fried declined to comment on the identity of the bail sponsors.

"FTX in my view now gets painted as a crypto problem. I think if you really peel enough onion layers, it's not really a crypto ... problem to happen here, it's fraud. "We talk about this as a crypto problem. But really, this is just fraud, and I think in some ways, not that dissimilar than Bernie Madoff," said Garlinghouse. "When Bernie Madoff occurred, we didn't totally restructure how we thought about oversight and regulation of hedge funds."

☆ An AI rival to ChatGPT passed a university level law and economics exam, and did better than many humans, professor says
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-19 | by ( Sawdah Bhaimiya | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

An AI received a marginal pass in a law and economics exam, economics professor Alex Tabarrok said. Tabarrok, a professor at George Mason University, said the AI's answer was "better than many human responses." The AI, known as Claude, was built by Anthropic, a company part-funded by Sam Bankman-Fried. Tabarrok said the exam was graded blind and that he considered Claude "a competitor" and "improvement" to OpenAI's GPT3, the tech underlying viral sensation ChatGPT. There has been an explosion of interest in AI capabilities since the launch of OpenAI's chatbot ChatGPT in November.

☆ Steve Jobs' nepo babies: From a model to a secret daughter, here's everything we know about the Apple cofounder's kids
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-19 | by ( Grace Kay | Aaron Mok | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +12 min

Steve Jobs left the bulk of his fortune to his wife, Laurene Powell Jobs, when he died in 2011. Later, he had Reed Jobs, Erin Jobs, and Eve Jobs with his wife, Laurene Powell Jobs. Apple, Laurene Powell Jobs, and Reed Jobs did not reply to requests for comment, nor did representatives for Lisa Brennan-Jobs and Eve Jobs. Since Jobs' death, Powell Jobs has been active in philanthropy and founded Emerson Collective in 2004 as a "social change organization." Erin Siena JobsErin Siena Jobs is the most private of Steve Jobs' children.

☆ Court asked to void verdict against Derek Chauvin in George Floyd's murder
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-18 | by ( The Associated Press | ) www.nbcnews.com time to read: +6 min

An attorney for Derek Chauvin asked an appeals court Wednesday to throw out the former Minneapolis police officer’s convictions in the murder of George Floyd, arguing that legal and procedural errors deprived him of a fair trial. But Neal Katyal, a special attorney for the state, said Chauvin got “one of the most transparent and thorough trials in our nation’s history. ... Chauvin’s many arguments before this court do not come close to justifying reversal.”Hennepin County Judge Peter Cahill sentenced Chauvin to 22 1/2 years after jurors found him guilty of second-degree murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter. “Judge Cahill managed this trial with enormous care, and even if Chauvin could identify some minor fault, any error is harmless,” Katyal said. Former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin addresses the court as Hennepin County Judge Peter Cahill presides over Chauvin's sentencing on June 25, 2021, at the Hennepin County Courthouse in Minneapolis.

Opening arguments kick off Wednesday in a trial that will see Tesla face off against shareholders who are accusing the company of misleading them over a tweet by Elon Musk that stated funding had been "secured" to take the electric car company private. Lead shareholder plaintiff Glen Littleton is seeking billions of dollars in damages over the August 2018 tweet, which prompted a brief rise in Tesla's stock price. Shares of company stock began a steady decline that continued into the following year. Musk and Tesla were separately fined $20 million and Musk was forced to step down as Tesla's chairman. He also agreed to a requirement to have lawyers review his statements about Tesla before publishing them on social media.

SAN FRANCISCO, Jan 18 (Reuters) - Attorneys for Tesla Inc (TSLA.O) and for investors will make opening arguments in a San Francisco court on Wednesday in a case to decide whether CEO Elon Musk's 2018 tweet that funding was "secured" to take the company private damaged shareholders. The case is a rare securities class action trial, and Musk and his company are bucking the norm of settling claims that clear high legal hurdles, making for a potentially dramatic trial at which Musk himself may testify. Tesla investor Glen Littleton is seeking "billions" in damages on behalf of shareholders who traded the company's stock in the days after Musk posted his plan to take the company private on Twitter in August 2018. While shareholders sue hundreds of companies and their executives for alleged securities fraud every year, very few of those cases make it to trial. Reporting by Jody Godoy in San Francisco Editing by Peter Henderson and Matthew LewisOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

The lawsuit seeks damages for shareholders who bought or sold Tesla stock in the days after Musk's tweets on Aug. 7, 2018. The shareholders have not specified the damages, but said Musk's tweets cost investors "billions." Potential panelists were asked ahead of time about their opinions of Musk and whether they own a Tesla vehicle. Investors sued in August 2018, shortly after Musk posted on Twitter that he was considering taking Tesla private at $420 per share. The defendants have said in court papers that they will argue that Musk had good reason to believe funding for the deal was secured.

☆ What's next for Goldman following deep cuts and organization overhaul
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-17 | by ( Dan Defrancesco | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

On tap we've got stories on JPMorgan's Jamie Dimon fielding questions about the bank's acquisition strategy, another bank plans to make cuts, and fast food options that won't completely crush your diet. On Wednesday the bank conducted a majority of its cuts, reducing its global workforce by about 6.5%. A few days later, on Friday, the bank reported losses of more than $3 billion since 2020 in the unit that houses the bank's consumer lending business. Meanwhile, some of the recently axed Goldman employees have been left in the dark on what's next for them, according to reporting from Hayley and Emmalyse Brownstein. Here are some fast food options that won't completely wreck your diet.

☆ Google's cookie crumbles
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-16 | by ( Dave Smith | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Google's cookie concept crumbles. Google's been testing a bunch of cookie-less proposals since 2020. Unfortunately, the web standards body W3C rejected Google's Topics API proposal, saying it maintains "the status quo of inappropriate surveillance on the web." In other news:A Tesla car dealership in Maplewood, Minnesota. The coolest electric cars hitting the streets this year.

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