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Sam Bankman-Fried wasn't offered a plea deal before his criminal trial

SBF
SBF is on trial in federal court. Chelsea Jia Feng/Insider
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The US government confirmed on Tuesday that Sam Bankman-Fried hadn't been offered any plea deals in the criminal case.

Bankman-Fried's lawyers said they were not interested in a plea deal. The US Department of Justice did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.

Some of the FTX cofounders' former associates, including ex-Alameda Research CEO Caroline Ellison and FTX cofounder Gary Wang, pleaded guilty to fraud charges in December and have been cooperating with investigators.

Jury selection in the trial started on Tuesday and the two sides are not expected to give their opening statements until Wednesday. Lawyers will select 12 jurors and six alternates from a pool of 50 prospective jurors.

The criminal trial will address the historic collapse of the crypto exchange platform FTX.

Bankman-Fried is charged with orchestrating a scheme to defraud FTX customers and investors out of billions of dollars.

Prosecutors say Bankman-Fried borrowed money from customer accounts to fund bets via Alameda Research, an affiliated hedge fund. He directed employees to develop programming code that allowed unlimited funds to move between the companies quickly and quietly, prosecutors alleged in their indictment.

The former FTX CEO is facing seven criminal charges, including wire fraud and money laundering, and has pleaded not guilty to all counts. Since the exchange collapsed, Bankman-Fried has argued the people who took over FTX after it collapsed misunderstood his intentions and he has attempted to put the blame for the platform's collapse on other executives.

The trial could last six weeks, and Ellison and Wang are expected to testify. If convicted, Bankman-Fried could face a hefty prison sentence.

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Jacob Shamsian
Jacob Shamsian is a correspondent on Business Insider's Enterprise news desk. He is also a Global Reporter for Axel Springer.He was previously on BI's Legal Affairs desk, covering major litigation, courtroom trials, and the legal industry.Jacob has reported on the criminal trials of Donald TrumpGhislaine Maxwell, Sam Bankman-Fried, Sean "Diddy" CombsR. Kelly, and Anna Sorokin (AKA Anna Delvey), He's also covered blockbuster civil trials, including both E. Jean Carroll v. Trump trials, the New York Attorney General's fraud trial against TrumpSarah Palin v. The New York Times, and Johnny Depp v. Amber Heard.His stories have been cited in judicial rulings, lawsuits, letters from congressional committees, and in numerous media publications. He was a pool reporter in Donald Trump's Manhattan criminal trial.Jacob has been interviewed on CNN, the docuseries "Surviving R. Kelly," ABC's "Good Morning America," and BBC News, among other programs. His work has been cited by media outlets, including The New York Times, Bloomberg News, The Washington Post, Vanity Fair, and New York magazine. He's also written for GQ, The Awl, The New Republic, Entertainment Weekly, Time, and Modern Farmer.You can reach Jacob on Signal at JacobShamsian.07.
Grace Kay
Grace Kay was a Correspondent on Business Insider’s enterprise desk, where she covered the inner workings of Tesla, Elon Musk’s AI startup, xAI, and the broader robotics and electric vehicle industries.Her stories have been cited by multiple publications, including Reuters, Bloomberg, and CNBC. Before joining Business Insider, she worked at Bloomberg and Forbes.Tesla: Inside 'Project Rodeo,' the Tesla effort pushing the limits of self-driving technologyInternal Tesla salary database shows Elon Musk's strategy: Lower salaries, bigger stock grantsTesla tells staff it plans to roll out its Robotaxi service in San Francisco this weekendTesla has been working on modified Model Ys for its Robotaxi programTesla prioritizes Musk's and other 'VIP' drivers' data to train self-driving softwareAshok Elluswamy is the most powerful Tesla executive you've never heard ofxAI:Internal documents reveal how Elon Musk's xAI trains Grok to be the anti-woke chatbotXAI's Macrohard project stalls as Tesla ramps up a similar AI agent effortElon Musk's xAI plans to supply computing power to coding startup CursorWar rooms, group chats, and video games: Inside Elon Musk's AI startupBehind Grok's 'sexy' settings, workers review explicit and disturbing contentElon Musk's xAI lays off hundreds of workers tasked with training GrokEVs and robots:Fisker employees are fixing some customers' cars with parts from the company's vehicle 'graveyard,' sources sayFisker Ocean reservation cancellations top 40,000 as the EV company tries to fight off bankruptcy, leaked data showsInside the downfall of Henrik Fisker's second automotive startup, which just filed for bankruptcyInside the glass-walled Tesla lab where workers train the Optimus robot to act like a humanInside OpenAI's renewed push into robotics
Katie Balevic was a weekend reporter on the trending team. Her coverage at Business Insider focused on guaranteed basic income, Meta, and tech industry executives. She also enjoyed covering breaking news, politics, and the court system.Before joining BI, Katie was a freelancer for Austonia and The US Sun, as well as an intern at NBC and the US Capitol. She is a graduate of the University of Texas at Austin, where she earned a degree in journalism, a degree in government, and a minor in Russian language. Some of her favorite stories include: