Three Reasons SBF Will Be Convicted: Former SEC Lawyer

Former SEC lawyer John Reed Stark took to social media on Monday with an in-depth forecast of how Sam Bankman-Fried’s felony trial is more likely to play out. The disgraced ex-boss of defunct crypto trade FTX faces sweeping fraud costs that will collectively earn him a lifetime in jail. Although he’ll quickly have his day in court docket, Stark says the founder’s possibilities of acquittal are low. 

“Not often within the historical past of economic fraud prosecutions has a DOJ workforce possessed this degree of unconstrained entry to such a unprecedented treasure trove of witnesses and proof,” wrote the ex-lawyer on Twitter on Monday. 

Stark famous the various high-profile executives near Bankman-Fried who’ve already pled responsible to cut back their felony sentences. They embody FTX co-founder Gary Wang, engineering director Nisha Singh, FTX Digital Markets CEO Ryan Salame, and Alameda Analysis CEO Caroline Ellison. 

Ellison—who was additionally SBF’s on-again, off-again girlfriend—admitted in her publicly leaked diary that she felt unequipped to run Alameda, the SBF-owned crypto buying and selling desk deeply tied to the fraud. After leaking her diary to the media, SBF noticed his bail revoked for witness tampering. 

With such a strong lineup of cooperating witnesses, Stark believes the prosecution’s stockpile of documented proof of Bankman-Fried’s unlawful dealings “is arguably unprecedented for a monetary fraud trial.”

He mentioned John Ray III’s dealing with of the trade’s chapter will even possible weigh towards its founder. A month after assuming management of the trade, Ray testified earlier than Congress stating that FTX was an “unprecedented” company failure attributable to its “full absence of reliable monetary data.”

Stark believes Ray has possible handed the federal government most of his findings, providing entry to a mountain of inculpatory proof towards SBF. 

Lastly, Bankman-Fried has possible already incriminated himself by way of his post-FTX “public relations marketing campaign,” throughout which he engaged in a number of interviews with unbiased journalists, legacy media, and Twitter areas in an try and clear his identify.

“SBF has merely refused to shut-up,” Stark wrote. “Whether or not SBF is loopy like a fox or can’t management his compulsive need to reveal his soul is a debate left for not simply authorized, however psychological consultants as effectively.”

Based on Stark, his hours of on-the-record explanations and responses open up main potentialities for impeachment—offering proof that reveals inconsistencies and falsehoods in an individual’s statements over time. 

Federal prosecutors concerned in different cryptocurrency fraud schemes informed Decrypt final week that additionally they see few paths to victory for SBF. Daniel C. Silva, who helped prosecute BitConnect, mentioned the trial would “be fairly overwhelming if it is delivered to a jury in the identical approach that it was specified by the indictment.”Jordan Estes, a companion on the regulation agency Kramer Levin, mentioned Ellison’s presence may add drama to the case that may finally align the jury towards the FTX founder. “As a prosecutor in a fraud case, that may be actually vital for telling the story and grabbing the jury’s consideration,” she mentioned.