Famed author Michael Lewis did not stick around for the verdict in the criminal trial of Sam Bankman-Fried, the onetime crypto kingpin who last week was convicted on seven counts of fraud and conspiracy by a Manhattan federal jury after deliberations that lasted just over four hours.
But Lewis, whose book “Going Infinite” about the rise and fall of Sam Bankman-Fried and his FTX crypto empire has been criticized for its flattering portrait of the fraudster, was in the courtroom for several days. Lewis even pontificated about the events on a podcast he hosted called “Judging Sam,” where he continued to praise the 31-year-old former multibillionaire.
The facts of the case revolved around what the prosecution called the theft of customer funds deposited at FTX, Bankman-Fried’s crypto exchange, which were then funneled to its sister company, Alameda Research, where they were used to place bets on crypto as well as to buy luxury real estate and private jets, pay celebrities to promote FTX, and donate to U.S. politicians in an effort to gain favorable regulation on crypto. After crypto crashed during the summer of 2022, Alameda’s bets went south and FTX went bankrupt, losing some $8 billion of other people’s money in the biggest financial scandal since the collapse of Bernie Madoff’s ponzi scheme.
But despite a mountain of evidence against Bankman-Fried that was presented in court, through written documents and the oral testimony of three former FTX executives who pled guilty, Lewis was still enamored with his protagonist. On his podcast, he said that Bankman-Fried had a “superpower” in avoiding questions and was a “wonderful explainer” who was “very smart, very persuasive.”
Lewis argued on the podcast that the onetime multibillionaire was not really a thief, as the prosecution alleged, but merely a gambler who simply borrowed customers’ money and then lost it in a lapse of risk management.
“Their insistent line is that he stole the money,” Lewis said, who argued that instead Bankman-Fried borrowed it and put it at risk without asking anybody’s permission.” He suggested that a juror would likely have more sympathy for a gambler than a crook.
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Michelle Celarier 