Will FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried’s charm offensive backfire amid criminal probe?
- Bankman-Fried, who is set to testify before a US House panel about the cryptocurrency platform’s collapse, has gone on a speaking spree despite facing scrutiny from prosecutors
- Lawyers say the MIT graduate’s move increases the risk of torpedoing a potential defence strategy
Omnipresent on talk shows and conference panels, disgraced cryptocurrency tycoon Sam Bankman-Fried is defying the advice of the legal profession and staying in the public eye despite facing the real threat of prosecution and even jail time.
As the architect and former CEO of a bankrupt enterprise that cannot account for billions of dollars in missing customer funds, Bankman-Fried faces scrutiny from regulators, prosecutors and politicians.
The testimony in the US capital will mark a throwback to the heady period before FTX’s sudden implosion last month, when the mop-haired computer whizz was feted in Washington as a respectable face for cryptocurrency who doled out tens of millions of dollars in political donations.
“By speaking out, Mr. Bankman-Fried is putting himself in greater jeopardy and acting contrary to what competent counsel would advise a client,” said Jacob Frenkel, a former Justice Department prosecutor at Dickinson Wright.
As much as anyone, Bankman-Fried had embodied the apparent arrival of cryptocurrency as a major market in finance and no longer a frowned on get-rich-quick scheme shunned by the establishment.