Star Witness Caroline Ellison says Sam Bankman Fried made ‘terrible mistakes’

Sam Bankman Fried’s lawyer on Thursday sought to undermine the testimony of Caroline Ellison, the prosecution’s star witness in his criminal fraud trial, as she continued her insistence that the former cryptocurrency mogul was behind the misuse of billions of dollars of customer money on his FTX exchange.

Over the course of approximately five hours of questioning, Mr. Mark Cohen, Bankman-Fried’s defense attorney, questioned Ms. Ellison about her decision to cooperate with prosecutors in exchange for leniency. He also asked her about the document she sent to employees at Alameda Research, the cryptocurrency trading firm she ran for Mr. Bankman-Fried, which painted a rosier picture of the company’s financial situation than it described in private.

but mr. Cohen did not raise any major revelations or contradictions from the woman. Ellison, 28, who stood by her previous testimony that she followed the master’s orders. Bankman-Fried on allowing Alameda to profit from FTX clients’ funds.

“I think they were terrible mistakes,” she said of El-Sayed. Bankman-Fried decisions in the summer of 2022, which ultimately led to the collapse of FTX and Alameda.

Just over a week in mr. The Trial of Bankman-Fried, Mrs. Ellison emerged as the strongest witness against him. In her testimony in federal court in Manhattan, she told the jury that Mr. Bankman-Fried, 31, had known for months that Alameda’s finances were in a parlous state and that the company would face intense pressure to repay most of the $10 billion it had borrowed from FTX clients.

Ms. Ellison ran Alameda and dated Mr. Bankman Fried. After FTX and Alameda failed in November, federal prosecutors charged Mr. Bankman-Fried transferred billions of dollars in FTX customer deposits to Alameda, then spent the money on political donations, real estate purchases and other ventures. It has become a symbol of arrogance and reckless risk-taking in the cryptocurrency industry.

Ms. Ellison and two other high-ranking FTX executives, Gary Wang and Nishad Singh, later pleaded guilty to fraud and agreed to cooperate with the government.

Ms. Ellison, who was on the witness stand for a third day, provided some of the most raw and emotional testimony of the trial. On Wednesday, she held back tears as she described the implosion of the master’s home. Bankman-Fried Companies said part of them was relieved that they would no longer have to lie to hide that Alameda owed billions of dollars to FTX clients.

Under questioning Mr. Cohen, Mrs. Ellison admitted that she sent a misleading document to Alameda employees last year that presented a more optimistic version of the company’s business performance than what she discussed with Mr. Ellison. Bankman Fried.

“Yes, I would say that this document was misleading about the true condition of Alameda,” she testified.

But mrs. Ellison said she did this to maintain Alameda employee morale at a time when the cryptocurrency market was under widespread pressure.

Ms. Ellison also said that after Mr. Bankman-Fried put her in charge of Alameda in 2021, and he was not involved in many of the company’s key decisions.

to show that mr. Bankman-Fried was completely unaware of what was happening in Alameda, sir. Cohen asked Mrs. Ellison described a case in which she realized that some FTX customer deposits were arriving in Alameda bank accounts. FTX used Alameda to store client funds before it got its own bank accounts, but it had trouble redirecting those funds.

Ms. Ellison said of Mr. Bankman Fried said she did not recall “getting the impression whether he knew about the affair or not.” Mr. Cohen noted that this was inconsistent with what she told prosecutors in a previous interview, when she said that Mr. Bankman-Fried may not have been aware of the problem.

Ms. Ellison also said mr. Bankman-Fried became more involved in Alameda by the spring of 2022 and decided to tap FTX client funds to pay off the company’s commercial lenders.

Under questioning Mr. Cohen, Mrs. Ellison said that despite her concerns, she did not resign from Alameda. But when the prosecutor questioned her again, she said she had seriously considered resigning in the months before the corporate collapse, and that Mr. Trump intended to resign from office. Bankman-Fried talked to her about it.

“I trusted his opinion and didn’t want FTX and Alameda to collapse, and if he thought my resignation might cause that, I didn’t want to do it,” she said.

Mr. Cohen also focused on the events surrounding Ms. Ellison’s decision to plead guilty and cooperate with prosecutors and her concerns about Alameda’s use of FTX client funds.

Ms. Ellison said FBI agents came to her parents’ home last November after the collapse of FTX and Alameda. Ms. Ellison said agents had a search warrant that allowed them to seize the computers of her boyfriend, who was staying with her at the time; Her mother, Sarah Fisher Ellison, is an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She did not mention the name of her boyfriend, but said that he worked for Mr. Bankman Fried Works.

In general, Madam, Ellison said she held about 20 meetings with prosecutors, including a meeting that lasted for several hours on Monday, the day before she took the witness stand.

Ms. Ellison also said that despite her concerns about Alameda borrowing billions of dollars in FTX client money, she had never talked about the matter with anyone other than Mr. Ellison. Bankman Fried, Mr. Wang and Mr. Singh.

Sometimes, mrs. Ellison’s testimony this week turned into a war of attrition between Mr. Ellison and Mr. Ellison. Cohen and prosecutors. The attorneys had several conversations with the judge that the jury could not hear to discuss the admissibility of certain documents.

In one conversation on Wednesday, Assistant U.S. Attorney Danielle Sasson said she noticed Mr. Bankman-Fried had “laughed, visibly shaken his head, and snickered” at various points during Ms.’s hearing. Ellison’s testimony. Ms. Sassoon speculated that he might have had a “visible influence on her,” according to the trial transcript.

Judge Louis A. said: Kaplan, the presiding judge, said he did not see what the woman said. Sassoon had indicated that he would not make any comments to the jury. But the judge told Mr. Bankman-Fried’s attorneys privately tell their client that if he makes any visible expressions, he should stop.

Christian Drape, a former Alameda developer, took the stage after Ms. Ellison finished Thursday afternoon. During his testimony, the prosecution played an audio recording of a “comprehensive meeting” in which the woman participated. Ellison told Alameda employees about the use of FTX client funds and the imminent collapse of the company.

The turn of events left Mr. He said Darabi was “completely shocked.”