NEW YORK — Gary Wang, a former top executive of the failed FTX cryptocurrency exchange, testified that Sam Bankman-Fried, the company’s founder, was the final decision-maker at the firm and directed a closely related hedge fund to misuse as it pleased billions of dollars in money from FTX customers.
Over more than six hours of testimony in federal court in Manhattan on Thursday and Friday, Wang said Bankman-Fried was fully aware that a sister cryptocurrency trading firm, Alameda Research, had siphoned off $8 billion in customer money from FTX. He said Bankman-Fried had lied in his public statements in November about FTX customer assets being safe and secure.
Bankman-Fried called the shots on big issues at FTX, Wang told the jury of nine women and three men. “In the end, it was Sam’s decision,” he said.
Wang, 30, who was also a founder of FTX and programmed its code base, is a crucial witness in Bankman-Fried’s high-profile criminal fraud trial. Wang is one of Bankman-Fried’s three close advisers who have pleaded guilty and agreed to cooperate against the entrepreneur, who has been charged with orchestrating a conspiracy to use as much as $10 billion of FTX customer money for all manner of personal projects.
A run on deposits last year exposed an $8 billion hole in FTX’s accounts, which prosecutors allege stems in large part from “special privileges” that allowed Alameda to tap into FTX customer money. FTX filed for bankruptcy and Bankman-Fried was charged a month later with wire fraud, securities fraud, money laundering and related conspiracy charges. He has pleaded not guilty and faces what could amount to a life sentence if convicted.
Within weeks of FTX’s implosion, Wang, a friend of Bankman-Fried’s from high school math camp, pleaded guilty to aiding him in that conspiracy. Nishad Singh and Caroline Ellison, two other top executives in Bankman-Fried’s business empire, have also pleaded guilty and are cooperating with prosecutors.
This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/06/technology/gary-wang-ftx-sam-bankman-fried-trial.html">The New York Times</a>.
