Grit Capital CEO calls Bankman-Fried's not-guilty plea 'shocking'

Banking & Financial Services
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Sam Bankman-Fried pleaded not guilty to eight charges related to the collapse of FTX, a cryptocurrency exchange and crypto hedge fund. | Facebook/Sam Bankman-Fried

CEO of financial media company Grit Capital Genevieve Roch-Decter is questioning why Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) apologized repeatedly over the last two months if he is now claiming to be not guilty of all fraud charges.

At his arraignment earlier this month, Bankman-Fried pleaded not guilty to eight charges related to the collapse of FTX, for which he could face up to 115 years in prison.

"If SBF is not guilty of all charges... then what did he keep apologizing for in interviews?" Roch-Decter tweeted Jan. 3.

According to NPR, on Jan. 3, Bankman-Fried pleaded not guilty during his arraignment at the U.S. District Court for the Southern District in Lower Manhattan. The charges include lying to FTX investors and misusing billions of dollars of customers' funds. Bankman-Fried's not-guilty plea comes after two of his former top executives, FTX cofounder Gary Wang and former Alameda Research CEO Caroline Ellison, have pleaded guilty and are reportedly cooperating with prosecutors and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). 

Roch-Decter said on Fox Business that she found it "shocking" that Bankman-Fried is pleading not guilty.

"There is overwhelming evidence against this, and he's incriminated himself over and over again, especially on his apology tour that he did. And his girlfriend, or former girlfriend, throwing him under the bus for her own plea deal — it's shocking." Roch-Decter added that the FTX scandal has led to a "loss of confidence in crypto."

James Park, a securities fraud expert at UCA Law said that Wang's and Ellison's plea deals may have prompted Bankman-Fried's not-guilty plea, according to NPR. 

"Sam Bankman-Fried was probably not offered a deal because he is likely the main instigator of the fraud, and there is no one higher up that he can testify against," Park said, according to NPR. "He thus had no incentive to plead guilty and will attempt to leverage his ability to take the case to trial to get a more favorable sentence than is being offered at the start of the case."

When Ellison, who has been romantically linked to Bankman-Fried, appeared in court in December to plead guilty to seven criminal charges, she told the judge that she and Bankman-Fried had knowingly misled FTX investors and customers and conspired to steal billions of dollars, according to Forbes.

Ellison reportedly said in court, “I knew that it was wrong."

In the wake of FTX's collapse, Bankman-Fried engaged in a series of interviews, including with The New York Times and ABC’s "Good Morning America," despite recommendations from his legal team.

In an opinion piece for CoinDesk, David Morris wrote that Bankman-Fried "wound up directly implicating himself in a variety of ways" during his "media tour." Morris wrote, "SBF has repeatedly seemed to admit to, or come close to admitting to, specific corrupt practices at FTX and Alameda. Some of these were previously either contained only in dry legal documents or just merely suspected. These statements — in his own words, and on the public record — could prove extremely harmful to him in a courtroom."

During these interviews, Bankman-Fried "effectively admitted" to comingling FTX and Alameda funds, and in a Twitter Spaces event, he "seemed to admit" that when FTX customers purchased Bitcoin, FTX did not actually purchase and hold the Bitcoin.

In an interview with New York Magazine, Bankman-Fried said, "I feel real [expletive] bad about what happened. It hurt a lot of customers, and it hurt a lot of employees, and my friends — and I want to do anything that I can to try to make that up as best that I can. But it’s — it’s bad. I [expletive] up. I did. In multiple ways, frankly."

Bankman-Fried's trial is set to begin in early October. He was extradited from the Bahamas on Dec. 21, and on Dec. 22 he posted a $250 million bail and has since been residing with his parents in California, according to NPR.