Ex-FTX boss brushes off comments on funds’ safety

NEW YORK — As his cryptocurrency empire rapidly expanded, right up until its collapse nearly a year ago, former crypto mogul Sam Bankman-Fried made a point of publicly reassuring customers their funds were in safe hands.

On Monday, those statements came back to haunt him as he faced the prosecution’s cross-examination in what could be the most consequential moment of his criminal trial, now in its homestretch.

Bankman-Fried dodged questions about his recollection of making those claims, often opting instead for: “No, but I may have.”

The statements were at the heart of federal prosecutor Danielle Sassoon’s presentation as she showcased them to the jury. The defendant has given prosecutors a lot of material to work with — both on the stand and in the volumes of commentary he offered as his business rose and after it crashed.

In her cross-examination, Sassoon compared Bankman-Fried’s statements on social media and in interviews, as well as his appearances before congressional hearings, with his private comments, which showed disdain for his colleagues as well as for his followers.

At one point, in a text to his inner circle of his associates, he referred to government regulators with a vulgarity. In another text, he crudely disparaged a subset of his followers even as he publicly courted their trust.

Bankman-Fried insisted on Friday he consistently acted in good faith and only learned that his hedge fund, Alameda Research, owed $8 billion to FTX in the month before the businesses collapsed. He acknowledged making mistakes — conceding “a lot of people got hurt” — but insisted he neither defrauded anyone nor took customer funds.