A top firm of Silicon Valley investors once boldly predicted that Sam Bankman-Fried could become the world’s ‘first trillionaire’.
His attempt to becoming the first trillionaire on earth
And yet the young business guru apparently disdained wealth.
Pledging to give his money away, he famously only ever wore baggy shorts and old T-shirts, even when sharing a debating stage with Tony Blair and Bill Clinton.
But now, the heady talk of trillions and saving the planet has imploded in one of the biggest financial frauds on record. And the sloppily dressed cryptocurrency entrepreneur has a new uniform — a prison-issue one.
In an extraordinary fall from grace for a tech-world golden boy whose business empire went from £21 billion to virtually nothing in a matter of days, 31-year-old ‘SBF’, as he’s known, is facing up to 110 years behind bars.
How he was found guilty
After a month-long trial, a jury in Manhattan took just over four hours to find him guilty on all seven counts of stealing from customers of his now- bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange, FTX.
Prosecutors demolished his claims that he was just a clueless ‘altruist’ who naively over-trusted his colleagues — he was disorganised, incompetent and even irresponsible, he’d insisted, but not a swindler.
‘The crypto industry might be new, the players like Sam Bankman-Fried may be new, but this kind of fraud is as old as time and we have no patience for it,’ senior prosecutor Damian Williams intoned outside court after the verdict came down on Thursday evening.
READ MORE: FTX crypto boss, Sam Bankman-Fried charged with hundreds of illegal campaign donations
The court heard that SBF stole as much as $10 billion (£8.2 billion) from users of FTX, an online exchange where customers banked cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, and spent it on lavish properties, political donations, risky investments and paying himself huge sums of money.
Asked what he knew about cryptocurrencies, the one-time darling of the financial technology world replied: ‘Basically nothing.’
He said he knew they existed but ‘had absolutely no idea how they worked’.
Bankman-Fried may not walk alone into the prison
Bankman-Fried may well be followed to prison by three of his colleagues — including his on-off girlfriend, Caroline Ellison — who have pleaded guilty and are yet to be sentenced.
But there are others who many believe also have a case to answer over the scandal, though not a criminal one.
The judge let FTX’s investors off the hook, saying they weren’t relevant to the charges against SBF.
However, there were also the celebrities — from Clinton and Blair to pop star Katy Perry and supermodel Gisele Bundchen —who fawned over SBF and happily loaned their star power to his fraudulent enterprise, though there is no evidence they were aware it was acting criminally.
He maximized celebrity endorsements
The glitter of stardom was a crucial ingredient of the operation. For all his professed cluelessness, SBF understood the power of celebrity endorsement.
He needed stars on board to drum up excitement about cryptocurrencies — an industry based on secrecy that was struggling to break free from its association with drug-traffickers and money launderers.
He lavished eye-watering sums on stars — paying American football icon Tom Brady £45 million and his then-wife, Brazilian supermodel Gisele Bundchen, another £16 million for just 20 hours of their time making adverts for FTX.
He also splashed out £8 million on actor Larry David, star of the comedy series Curb Your Enthusiasm, to appear in a 60-second commercial that was shown on U.S. TV during the Super Bowl.
According to SBF biographer Michael Lewis, FTX had agreed a deal to pay the superstar singer Taylor Swift between £20 million and £25 million a year just to plug the company, but Bankman-Fried eventually backed out of it.
