Prosecutors accuse FTX’s Sam Bankman-Fried of witness tampering

US prosecutors have accused FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried of witness tampering and requested a federal choose to subject an order that might bar the previous billionaire and different events from making public statements more likely to intervene with a good trial.

The prosecutors wrote to US District Judge Lewis Kaplan on Thursday referencing a New York Times article titled “Inside the Private Writings of Caroline Ellison, Star Witness in the FTX Case”.

The article reported excerpts from Ellison’s private Google paperwork from earlier than the collapse of FTX during which she spoke about being “pretty unhappy and overwhelmed” along with her job and feeling “hurt/rejected” from her breakup with Bankman-Fried.

Ellison-led Bankman-Fried’s Alameda Research hedge fund has pleaded responsible to defrauding buyers and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors. In December, Bankman-Fried mentioned he and Ellison had been in a relationship however gave no additional particulars.

Prosecutors mentioned it was obvious Bankman-Fried shared paperwork with the New York Times and that his legal professionals have since confirmed to the federal government that he met with one of many article’s authors in individual and shared paperwork “that were not part of the government’s discovery material.”

Bankman-Fried’s spokesperson and legal professionals didn’t instantly reply to requests for remark. Neither New York Times nor Ellison’s legal professionals responded to Reuters’ requests for remark.

The prosecutors argued that by sharing these paperwork, Bankman-Fried was making an attempt to malign Ellison’s credibility, and that such conduct might chill witnesses from testifying and taint the jury pool. “By selectively sharing certain private documents with the New York Times, the defendant is attempting to discredit a witness, cast Ellison in a poor light, and advance his defense through the press and outside the constraints of the courtroom and rules of evidence: that Ellison was a jilted lover who perpetrated these crimes alone”, prosecutors wrote within the letter.

Earlier on Thursday, FTX Trading sued founder Bankman-Fried and different former executives of the cryptocurrency change, searching for to recoup greater than $1 billion they allegedly misappropriated earlier than FTX went bankrupt.

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