A reminder, dear reader: If you’re accused of committing massive fraud and risk facing the rest of your life in prison, you should probably turn down that interview with “Good Morning America.”
Such advice might’ve served Sam Bankman-Fried, the disgraced crypto founder who couldn’t keep quiet last year following the collapse of his FTX crypto empire, after he allegedly stole billions of dollars of customers’ money.
To the chagrin of his lawyers (Asked by journalist Andrew Ross Sorkin on Nov. 30 if his attorneys were “suggesting this is a good idea for you to be speaking,” he replied: “No, they’re very much not.”), the crypto founder went on a media blitz following FTX’s collapse – seemingly desperate to dish out his side of the story to practically anyone who would listen, be they journalists, Twitter personalities or vexed crypto day traders.
Bankman-Fried was asked during his direct questioning last week why he spoke to so many journalists. “I felt like it was the right thing for me to do,” he told his lawyer.
Right or wrong, the FTX founder’s media strategy seemed as perplexing as ever on Monday, when prosecutors spent hours peppering him with questions about potential criminality at FTX — using his countless post-collapse interviews as corroborating evidence.
The bulk of Bankman-Fried’s exchanges with Danielle Sassoon, the assistant U.S. attorney who led the questioning, followed a strikingly similar pattern. Sassoon would ask the defendant a question: “In private, you said things like ‘f–k regulators, didn’t you?” Bankman-Fried would respond to the effect of “I don’t recall saying that,” or in the case of the comment disparaging regulators: “I said that once.”
Then, whether or not Bankman-Fried could remember making a statement, Sassoon was always ready with corroborating evidence – like the defendant’s ill-advised, viral text exchange with a Vox reporter expressing his distaste for regulators.
SBF’s friendliness with journalists
Bankman-Fried’s proclivity for speaking with the press had worked well for him historically. His trademark curly mop of hair, T-shirt and cargo shorts were complemented by a nerdily irreverent speaking style that lent him an air of earnest eccentricity in interviews.
This public image was beamed around the world by his frequent media appearances,…
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