“Sam didn’t defraud anyone,” lead defense attorney Mark Cohen told jurors, arguing that his client acted in good faith throughout the rise and fall of his startups.
“Sam was someone who worked very hard,” Cohen said, adding that SBF was “a math nerd who didn’t drink or party.”
As for the mistakes that led to FTX’s and Alameda’s undoing, Cohen argued that Bankman-Fried and his colleagues, like many entrepreneurs, were “building the plane as they were flying it.” But as the crypto industry flailed in 2022, they were about to fly into “a perfect storm.”
Cohen echoed some of the defenses Bankman-Fried has made over the past year, including that “things were moving quickly” and FTX didn’t have a fully built-out risk management team.
“It’s not a crime to be the CEO of a company that later files for bankruptcy,” he said.
Cohen also sought to undermine the prosecution’s star witness, Caroline Ellison, Bankman-Fried’s ex-girlfriend and former CEO of Alameda. Cohen told the jury that despite Bankman-Fried’s directive to place hedges on Alameda’s risky positions, she failed to do so. Bankman-Fried himself complained in documents leaked to the New York Times that he believed Ellison wasn’t able to handle the job.
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