Sam Bankman-Fried spent many of the breaks during his trial in New York sitting alone at the defence table flanked by two hulking federal marshals. But on the day he was due to testify, he stood up and walked to the witness stand early. An official told him to step down and wait to be called.
The 31-year-old former billionaire, who faces decades in prison after being convicted of fraud and money laundering, has always been eager to spin his own story. But in the 26th floor Manhattan courtroom, he watched in silence as his closest friends and former girlfriend took the stand to give a damning account of his stunning rise and fall.
Prosecutors said he “secretly” took “billions out the back door” at his FTX crypto exchange to fund reckless spending by his private trading firm, leading to FTX’s collapse last November with an $8bn hole in its balance sheet. “The defendant was motivated by greed and ambition,” prosecutor Nick Roos said. “Thousands of people lost billions of dollars . . . because he wanted more money to do whatever he wanted with . . . Let the evidence prevail over his storytelling.”