Emails, chat logs, code and notebook: Evidence vs. FTX
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.
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, as well as strikingly personal reflections recorded by a key witness in the case.
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, but the numbers have increased significantly in recent years.
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 BankmanFried's Google accounts, which amounted to 2.5 million pages alone. At a hearing in March, Nicolas Roos, a federal prosecutor investigating FTX, said the government had obtained a laptop crammed with so much information that the FBI's technicians were struggling to decipher all of it.
“It is a massive amount to sift through, and sometimes you can find incredibly useful information,” said Moira Penza, a former federal prosecutor who's now in private practice. “It is a real challenge.”
Typically, the evidence in a criminal case remains largely secret until right before trial. But in BankmanFried'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 Bankman-Fried financed.
The requests were often broad. One person who got a subpoena said prosecutors had wanted every document related to FTX and dispatched a group of data experts who took days to extract the information from a set of devices.
While much of what prosecutors have gathered is typical corporate fare, other material points to the unusual personal dynamics at FTX.
The black notebook, described as a diary, belonged to Bankman-Fried's onand-off girlfriend, Caroline Ellison, a former top lieutenant in his business empire, three people familiar with the matter said.
Ellison, who was CEO of FTX's sister company, the hedge fund Alameda Research, also recorded observations about Bankman-Fried in a series of electronic documents that have circulated among lawyers in the case, three people with knowledge of the matter said. At times, two of the people said, Ellison expressed personal and professional resentment toward Bankman-Fried.
Lawyers and representatives for Bankman-Fried and Ellison either declined to comment or did not respond to requests for comment on the evidence in the case. A spokesperson for federal prosecutors in Manhattan declined to comment on the discovery process.
Ellison is expected to be a crucial witness. She has pleaded guilty to fraud charges along with two other top executives, Gary Wang and Nishad Singh, and agreed to cooperate with the prosecutors pursuing Bankman-Fried. In the days after FTX collapsed, she confessed to Alameda employees that she, Bankman-Fried, Wang and Singh had used FTX customer funds to fill holes in Alameda's accounts. She also dated Bankman-Fried and lived with him in a penthouse in the Bahamas, where the exchange was based.
Many of FTX's corporate records, including emails, Slack messages and transaction logs, were held by Sullivan & Cromwell, the law firm that took control of the exchange after it declared bankruptcy.