Judge Denies Sam Bankman-Fried's New Trial Request

Judge Lewis Kaplan dismissed Sam Bankman-Fried's request for a new trial, writing that the motion appeared to be part of a plan to rescue his reputation that the former FTX CEO hatched after FTX declared bankruptcy but before he was indicted.

Bankman-Fried claimed that three former executives who did not testify at his 2023 trial could counter insolvency claims. He named FTX former Bahamian CEO Ryan Salame and FTX former head of data science Daniel Chapsky as potential witnesses. Both pleaded guilty to charges related to FTX's collapse but never testified during Bankman-Fried's trial.

Kaplan rejected the new evidence claim as baseless on multiple levels. None of the witnesses were newly discovered, the judge wrote, since Bankman-Fried knew all three before trial and supposedly knew what they would say if they testified. The former FTX CEO also claimed that FTX engineering lead Nishad Singh changed his testimony following threats from the government. Kaplan called that claim wildly conspiratorial and entirely contradicted by the record.

Bankman-Fried tried to withdraw the motion on Wednesday after Kaplan denied it on Tuesday. The judge rejected that request too. Bankman-Fried told Kaplan he didn't believe he would get a fair hearing on the topic in front of him. The former crypto executive is currently serving his sentence at a federal prison in Lompoc, California, while an appeals court considers his conviction and sentence.

Salame received his own prison sentence in May 2024 for campaign finance law violations and operating an illegal money-transmitting business. The judge handed him 7.5 years for his role in transferring billions of dollars illegally from FTX customer funds to Alameda Research.