Bankman-Fried took the stand outside the jury’s presence in FTX trial

Sam Bankman-Fried took the witness stand in his federal fraud trial on October 26, 2023, giving his first sworn account of decisions at FTX after prosecutors rested their case. The jury did not hear the testimony: U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan conducted the examination outside its presence to determine which subjects could be admitted when the defense presented its case.

That procedural distinction was central. Bankman-Fried had begun testifying under oath, and prosecutors were permitted to question him, but his October 26 statements were not yet evidence for jurors deciding the seven fraud and conspiracy charges against him. He had pleaded not guilty.

The defense case opened

The prosecution concluded after presenting testimony over 12 trial days, according to contemporaneous Reuters reporting. Its final witness on October 26 was an FBI agent who discussed information extracted from Bankman-Fried’s devices. The defense then called two witnesses before putting Bankman-Fried on the stand.

Associated Press and Reuters reporters inside the Manhattan courtroom described an examination lasting nearly three hours. Defense lawyer Mark Cohen asked about subjects including FTX’s use of automatically deleted messages, the role of company lawyers in business decisions and interactions with Bahamian authorities during the exchange’s November 2022 collapse.

Bankman-Fried’s position during the hearing was that lawyers had been involved in several decisions that prosecutors portrayed as evidence of criminal intent. Assistant U.S. Attorney Danielle Sassoon questioned him about what advice he had actually requested or received and whether he had disclosed all relevant facts to counsel.

These were defense claims being tested for admissibility, not findings that counsel had authorized misconduct. The presence of a lawyer is not, by itself, proof that a defendant acted lawfully or lacked fraudulent intent. Kaplan was deciding whether particular testimony had an adequate factual and legal foundation for the jury to consider.

Why the testimony mattered

FTX’s collapse had left the court evaluating conduct inside a cryptocurrency exchange where customer deposits, affiliated trading activity and corporate controls were deeply intertwined. Former executives Caroline Ellison, Gary Wang and Nishad Singh had already testified for the prosecution after pleading guilty to related offenses. They attributed critical decisions involving FTX customer funds and Alameda Research to Bankman-Fried.

October 26 therefore marked the first time the defendant personally answered sworn questions about the conduct at issue. Taking the stand also exposed him to cross-examination. That made the decision unusually consequential: it gave the defense a direct way to contest the accounts of cooperating witnesses while allowing prosecutors to test Bankman-Fried’s explanations against documents, prior statements and other testimony.

The hearing did not resolve which account was accurate. Nor did it establish the amount customers had lost, the value available in the separate FTX bankruptcy estate or the recovery any creditor might eventually receive. Alleged dollar amounts discussed during a criminal trial were not interchangeable with audited bankruptcy assets or distributions.

What was known on October 26

The official Southern District of New York calendar confirms that United States v. Samuel Bankman-Fried, case 22-cr-673, was scheduled before Kaplan as a jury trial at 9:00 a.m. on October 26. Contemporaneous reports consistently establish that prosecutors rested, the defense opened and Bankman-Fried testified after jurors were excused.

As of October 26, no verdict had been returned, and the jury had not heard Bankman-Fried’s substantive defense testimony. The defensible event-day conclusion was consequently narrow: the most prominent criminal proceeding arising from FTX’s failure had entered its defense phase, but the admissibility and persuasive force of the founder’s account remained unresolved.