Sam Bankman-Fried Files To Get Almost All Charges Dropped
The shamed crypto mogul’s request depends on a technicality that has to do with his decision to leave the Bahamas on his own.
Sam Bankman-Fried’s only comfort as he waits for his trial this fall is Doordash. His lawyers are working hard to get him the easiest trial possible.
SBF’s pranks almost got his bail revoked, which led to him being banned from video games and most of the internet. Since then, his lawyers have spent a lot of time thinking of ways to speed up a trial that could put him in jail for a long time.
Fraud Charges Dismissed
On May 8, SBF’s lawyers followed up on two pre-trial memos that told the judges that Sam Bankman Fried wants some of the charges against him to be dropped.
In the formal motion, SBF’s lawyers ask that the charges of bribery, wire fraud, conspiracy to commit wire fraud, conspiracy to commit bank fraud, and running a money transmitter without a license be dropped.
The move also asked that charges for making improper political contributions be dropped. This goes against Sam Bankman-Fried’s earlier efforts to get the money from those contributions returned.
SBF Denies Some Allegations
According to SBF’s legal team, his voluntary extradition from the Bahamas to the United States is key to the move to drop the above charges. If SBF accepted to be extradited so that he could stand trial for certain crimes, his lawyers say that adding new charges after the fact is against what U.S. courts have done in the past.
“Thus, the plain terms of the Extradition Treaty require that the Government obtain the express consent of the Bahamas to prosecute Mr. Bankman-Fried on any new charges brought after Mr. Bankman-Fried’s extradition—silence cannot suffice for consent. […] The defense understands the Government has informed the Bahamas of the new charges added in the S3 Indictment and S5 Indictment, but the Bahamas has not consented to those charges.”
It will be interesting to see how this move fits in with the information that other FTX Group hotshots have freely given. Since Gary Wang and Caroline Ellison both made deals with the U.S. government to plead guilty, authorities should have a lot of evidence to use against SBF in new charges.
In the end, this request could lead to the charges being dropped from the trial set for October 2, only to be brought up again in a trial that would start soon after.
