Fiscales de SBF aclaran que el caso no se centra en criptomonedas, sino en engaños y codicia alrededor del robo.
Sam Bankman-Fried has been on trial for charges of fraud and money laundering for just over four weeks, and the case appears to be finally coming to an end. The prosecution began its closing arguments on Wednesday.
The assistant federal prosecutor, Nicolas Roos, was in front of the jury from 10 a.m. Eastern time until the court broke for lunch around 1 p.m., reiterating the prosecution’s case: Bankman-Fried lied, made false promises, and is responsible for billions of dollars lost by thousands of investors in FTX. And on top of that, Bankman-Fried had many opportunities to come clean, but he did not.
In a particularly dramatic moment, Roos pointed at the defendant and said, «Who is responsible? This man: Samuel Bankman-Fried.» The former CEO of FTX did not look back but slightly nodded his head.
The prosecutor emphasized that FTX was wrong in using customer funds without their knowledge or approval. «It was a universal understanding: customer funds belong to the customers and cannot be used,» Roos said, adding that even FTX’s terms of service stated that user deposits belonged to the users.
According to the evidence, there was a «big difference between what FTX said it had for customers and what it actually had» and how billions of dollars were missing, Roos said. «This is not about complicated cryptography [terms]. This is about deceit. This is about lies. This is about theft, greed.»
