Sam Bankman-Fried Requests New Trial in FTX Crypto Fraud Case
While serving his 25-year prison sentence, "convicted former cryptocurrency mogul Sam Bankman-Fried on Tuesday requested a new federal trial," reports Courthouse News, "based on what he says is newly discovered evidence concerning his company's solvency and its ability to repay all FTX customers for what prosecutors portrayed as the looting of $8 billion of his customers' money..."Bankman-Fried says evidence disclosed since his trial disproves prosecutors' case about Bankman-Fried's hedge fund running a multi-billion deficit of FTX customer funds, and instead shows that FTX always had sufficient assets to repay the cryptocurrency platform's customer deposits in full. "What it faced was a short-term liquidity crisis caused by a run on the exchange, not insolvency," he wrote... Bankman-Fried also accuses the Department of Justice of coercing a guilty plea and cooperation deal from Nishad Singh - a close friend of Bankman-Fried's younger brother - who testified at trial as a cooperating witness... Bankman-Fried says in the motion that prior to being pressured into a guilty plea, Singh's initial proffer to investigators "contradicted key parts of the government's version of events. But following threats from the government, Mr. Singh changed his proffers to fit the government's narrative and pleaded guilty to charges carrying up to 75 years in prison, with a promise from the prosecution that it would recommend little or no jail time if it concluded that his assistance in prosecuting Mr. Bankman-Fried was 'substantial,'" he wrote in the petition... Additionally, Bankman-Fried requested that U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan, who presided over his 2023 trial, recuse himself from ruling on this motion, "because of the manifest prejudice he has demonstrated towards Mr. Bankman-Fried." "Bankman-Fried's mother, Stanford Law School professor Barbara Fried, filed his self-represented bid for a new trial on his behalf in Manhattan federal court..."
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