FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried, center, is escorted out of Magistrate Court into a Corrections van, following a hearing in Nassau, Bahamas, Monday, Dec. 19, 2022. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)
NEW YORK (AP) – FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried will be arraigned in a Manhattan federal court Tuesday on charges that he cheated investors and looted customer deposits on his cryptocurrency trading platform.
Bankman-Fried, 30, was accused of illegally diverting massive sums of customer money from FTX to make lavish real estate purchases, donate money to politicians and make risky trades at Alameda Research, his cryptocurrency hedge fund trading firm.
He is expected to plead not guilty before Judge Lewis A. Kaplan before the judge and lawyers discuss a schedule for proceeding toward a trial.
Carolyn Ellison, 28, who ran Alameda, and Gary Wang, 29, who co-founded FTX, have pleaded guilty to fraud charges and are cooperating with prosecutors in a bid for leniency. Both are free on bail.
Their pleas were kept secret until Bankman-Fried was in the air after his extradition from the Bahamas, where FTX is based, due to fears that he might flee.
Bankman-Fried, 30, was released from custody on a $250 million personal recognizance bond with electronic monitoring about two weeks ago on the condition that he await trial at his parents’ house in Palo Alto, California.
