Some individuals, like disgraced crypto mogul Sam Bankman-Fried, actually simply don’t know when to cease speaking. Despite going through eight counts of U.S. prison expenses and dwelling underneath home arrest, SBF, as he’s typically known as, determined it was a very good time to launch a Substack newsletter.
In his first submit Thursday, titled FTX Pre-Mortem Overview, the founder re-hashed his model of occasions that led as much as his cryptocurrency alternate’s meltdown. Though rigorous reporting and federal investigations allege SBF could have defrauded greater than 9 million clients via a years lengthy internet of criminality, SBF’s weblog paints a really totally different image. In it, the founder tries to construct a story the place FTX, like so many different crypto corporations final 12 months, unluckily discovered itself on the bad-end of a digital asset downturn. SBF goes as far to say he may have remedied the state of affairs himself, had he not been pressured by FTX’s authorized crew to maneuver ahead with Chapter 11 chapter proceedings. SBF, who has pleaded not guilty, makes no point out of two of his closest associates, who did plead guilty and are already cooperating with the federal government’s ongoing case.
Overall, the e-newsletter largely re-hashes lots of the factors SBF made within the temporary interval between FTX’s collapse and his early December arrest within the Bahamas, the place he spoke loosely to only about each media group that may pay attention. Since then, the founder had remained comparatively silent, a observe authorized specialists say he ought to have caught to from the beginning.
“The most powerful evidence a prosecutor can have is the defendant’s own words, and Bankman-Fried is giving the government a gift,” former federal prosecutor Moira Penza told The New York Times “If I were prosecuting the case, I would want him to keep talking, and if I were defending him I would be telling him to shut his mouth.”