FTX fraud case aided by wealth of evidence

Snippets of computer code. More than 6 million pages of emails, Slack messages and other digital records. And a small black notebook, filled with handwritten observations and personal reflections.

For months, federal prosecutors building the criminal case against fallen cryptocurrency executive Sam Bankman-Fried have assembled a vast and unusually varied array of evidence. The documents include crypto transaction logs and encrypted group chats from Bankman-Fried’s collapsed exchange, FTX.

The mountain of evidence ranks among the largest ever collected in a white-collar securities fraud case prosecuted by federal authorities in Manhattan, according to data provided by a person with knowledge of the matter. In the 2004 securities fraud prosecution of Martha Stewart, for example, prosecutors produced 525,000 pages of evidence to the defense team.

The diversity and growing volume of materials in the FTX case underscore the legal challenges facing Bankman-Fried, 31, who is charged with 13 criminal counts, including accusations that he misappropriated billions of dollars in customer money, defrauded investors and violated campaign finance laws. He has pleaded not guilty.

With the trial set for October, prosecutors have gathered evidence ranging from phones and laptops to the contents of Bankman-Fried’s Google accounts, which amounted to 2.5 million pages alone.

Typically, the evidence in a criminal case remains largely secret until right before trial. But in Bankman-Fried’s case, interviews and a review of recent court filings have offered an early glimpse of the idiosyncratic array of records that the FTX prosecutors have collected.

The investigation began in November, after FTX’s collapse sent the crypto market into turmoil. Almost as soon as the exchange folded, prosecutors started gathering documents, sending subpoenas to FTX employees and seeking records from the political campaigns that BankmanFried financed.