The long-awaited fraud trial against disgraced FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried could reportedly be postponed after his lawyers complained he didn’t have enough time to review the evidence.
Judge Lewis Kaplan is considering delaying the trial by five months to combine it with a previously scheduled case related to the Bankman-Fried counterfeiting charge in the Bahamas, according to a new Reuters report.
Bankman-Fried’s lawyers allege officials failed to provide their clients with hard drives containing millions of pages of key evidence for him to view.
As Kaplan says, according to Reuters:
“If the defendant believes in good conscience that they need a deferral, they can ask.”
However, the report says Kaplan is unlikely to postpone the trial from its original date solely because of the sheer amount of evidence available and that the defense should meet a “real and unexpected need.”
In addition, Kaplan says there is no evidence that prosecutors acted in bad faith, as most of the evidence came from Bankman-Fried’s own personal Google account, meaning he had access to it before his bail was withdrawn.
Earlier, Bankman-Fried’s lawyers asked whether they could be allowed unlimited prison visits to their client. Days later, they asked if he could be temporarily released prior to his trial.
Bankman-Fried’s bail was withdrawn earlier this month after he allegedly tampered with witnesses. If the trial is combined with the others, it would be moved from October 3, 2023 to March 11, 2024, according to the report.
Bankman-Fried is accused of defrauding investors and mishandling billions of dollars in client funds in connection with the 2022 collapse of the crypto exchange FTX. If convicted, he could face decades behind bars.
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Featured image: Shutterstock/Volodimir Zozulinskyi