Sam Bankman-Fried Goes for Clueless in FTX Trial’s Last Gasp

If Sam Bankman-Fried wanted to go out with a bang, he accomplished the opposite, closing out his federal fraud trial with more pummeling from the prosecution and resting his defense with no further evidence or witnesses.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Daniel Sassoon repeatedly whaled on the former FTX CEO as he tried to claim ignorance about the management and financial condition of the crypto exchange and his hedge fund, Alameda Research. He was combative and almost petulant while responding evasively to answers in his third day on the witness stand.

Sassoon hit Bankman-Fried especially hard on his assertion that he knew little about an apparent $8 billion hole in Alameda’s balance sheet that was discovered around the summer of 2022. The disgraced whiz kid said he instructed some of his executives to handle the problem—a bug in FTX's code—but didn’t learn the details of it himself.