NEW YORK (NEWSnet/AP) — FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried plans to testify at his fraud trial, his lawyer told a federal judge Wednesday.
Attorney Mark Cohen told Judge Lewis A. Kaplan he plans to call three witnesses “and then our client is also going to be testifying” after the prosecution rests Thursday.
Cohen spoke during a phone and video conference in Manhattan federal court after the judge told him: “It’s time to tell me what defense case, if any, you’re going to put on.”
The judge told him that he didn’t have to say yet whether Bankman-Fried would testify, but Cohen volunteered that he would.
Prosecutors and the judge later discussed the possibility that closing arguments could occur as early as next week.
Bankman-Fried, 31, has pleaded not guilty to charges that he looted the financial accounts of his customers and investors to live lavishly and bolster the reputation of himself and his companies through large donations to charity and political candidates.
In the past month, prosecutors have leaned heavily on testimony from Bankman-Fried’s inner circle, former top executives who lived in a luxury penthouse condominium in the Bahamas with their boss before a customer rush on deposits in November 2022 exposed the missing billions of dollars and caused the businesses to collapse.
Former federal prosecutors said the singular goal for Bankman-Fried on the witness stand is to persuade one or two jurors that he’s a sympathetic character who let FTX’s problems get out of control.
“Only he’s capable of telling the story he wants to tell to the jury,” said Rachel Maimin, a former federal prosecutor in Manhattan who is now in private practice at Lowenstein Sandler LLP.
Bankman-Fried has been in jail since August, when Kaplan ruled he had tried to influence potential trial witnesses and revoked the $250 million personal recognizance bond that had permitted him to live with his parents in Palo Alto, California, after his December extradition from The Bahamas.
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