Sam Bankman-Fried once faced 13 criminal charges relating to his massive fraud scheme at the crypto exchange FTX. However, he’ll only face consequences for the seven charges he was found guilty of in November.
The United States Department of Justice (DOJ) dropped a second trial against Sam Bankman-Fried relating to five additional charges, according to a letter from the department to Judge Lewis Kaplan on Friday.
“The Government does not intend to proceed to trial on the Additional Counts,” said U.S. prosecutors in the court filing. The DOJ said extradition processes in The Bahamas would delay SBF’s sentencing, and cited “a strong public interest in a prompt resolution of this matter,” in its decision to drop the second trial.
A jury found Bankman-Fried guilty of all seven charges he was tried with in November, and the former crypto king is potentially facing decades in prison. The DOJ’s decision on Friday, however, means SBF won’t be charged with five more alleged crimes. Those dropped charges related to conspiracy to bribe foreign officials, bank fraud, operating an unlicensed money-transmitting business, securities fraud, and commodities fraud. Additionally, the DOJ dropped another charge back in July around Bankman-Fried’s campaign finance violations, which would have shed light on the millions of dollars he donated to political campaigns.
Coinbase’s Chief Legal Officer, Paul Grewal, called the DOJ’s decision “a mistake” and “a miscarriage of justice,” in a tweet on Friday. Grewal says SBF’s campaign finance charges deserve to be aired out publicly.
“What politicians and others knew what and when are critical questions that deserve answers,” he said.
There is evidence indicating wrongdoing on many of the dropped charges. In the first trial, prosecutors exhibited a full list of SBF’s political donations, totaling $133 million and including tens of millions of dollars donated to Republican and Democratic Super PACs. The DOJ also claimed in its letter to Judge Kaplan that previous evidence “proved that the defendant engaged in a conspiracy to bribe Chinese officials.”
The DOJ says much of the evidence in the second trial has already come to light, and Judge Kaplan can consider SBF committing these crimes in his sentencing planned for March. While this is true, it could be assumed that more evidence would have come up if SBF had been tried for the six crimes that were dropped.
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