The emails, texts, photos that could put Sam Bankman-Fried in prison

Much of the government’s case against Bankman-Fried hinges on the testimony, emails, and text messages from former top lieutenants who turned against him late last year.

In one email, shared by prosecutors, Bankman-Fried promised preferential treatment to Bahamian customers on the FTX cryptocurrency exchange.

In a message to Ryan Pinder, the attorney general and minister of legal affairs for the Bahamas, Bankman-Fried claimed FTX had “segregated funds for all Bahamian customers” and would be “more than happy to open up withdrawals for all Bahamian customers on FTX, so that they can, tomorrow, fully withdraw all of their assets, making them fully whole.”

The email was sent Nov. 9, one day after FTX had halted withdrawals and two days before it filed for bankruptcy. FTX users had collectively pulled $5 billion off the platform in what amounted to a bank run.

Two other separate email chains show that Bankman-Fried seriously mischaracterized his role at Alameda Research, according to prosecutors.

In a message to Rob Creamer, the CEO of Geneva Trading and chairman of FIA Principal Traders Group, Bankman-Fried wrote “Alameda has a totally separate team” that he didn’t manage.

Bankman-Fried wrote in an email to a Wall Street Journal reporter that Alameda’s account access “is the same as others” and that its traders don’t have “any special access to client information, marketdata, or trading.” According to the government, those claims have been debunked through witness testimony and internal company documents and text messages.

Alameda’s preferential treatment is spelled out in the two exhibits listed below. They show Alameda’s “allow negative” feature, and a line of credit on FTX that was $65 billion compared to $150 million or less for all other customers on the exchange.

A big part of the government’s case revolves around the ways Bankman-Fried allegedly directed spending of money at Alameda long after he was no longer officially running the hedge fund.

In a message to FTX’s then general counsel Can Sun, Bankman-Fried pushed to get a $250 million transfer to hedge fund Modulo Capital expedited in full within eight hours. Sun later testified about the transaction under a non-prosecution agreement with the government.

Bankman-Fried’s chummy ties with celebrities and his enthusiasm for spending hundreds of millions of dollars on endorsement deals were areas of focus for the government.

Prosecutors showed the court a spreadsheet of investments made in 2021. They included $205 million for FTX’s naming rights to Miami’s NBA arena, $150 million to Major League Baseball, $28.5 million to NBA star Stephen Curry, $50 million to quarterback Tom Brady and his then wife Giselle Bundchen, and $10 million to comedian Larry David. The deals on the spreadsheet amounted to a total of $1.13 billion.

Singh said he told Bankman-Fried he was very concerned and that the K5 investment was “value extractive.” He also said he asked Bankman-Fried if the investment was made with his money or FTX’s. The spreadsheet showed it came from Alameda.

In a motion to dismiss a complaint in bankruptcy court against K5, the firm’s lawyers said the “plaintiffs attempt to make Kives and Baum complicit in SBF’s wrongdoing has no basis in fact.”

Early in the morning on Nov. 7, the defendant put forth some “potential todos,” including halting withdrawals, sending a “confident tweet thread” and reaching out to firms such as Silverlake, Sequoia, and Apollo as they “wake up over the next few hours” to try to shore up cash.

Later that morning, Salame linked to a tweet from an anonymous crypto trader saying, “cant wait for my FTX airdrop for not moving any of my funds.”

Bankman-Fried chimed in with different ideas about how to take advantage of the post in an apparent effort to provide false hope to FTX customers that they’d receive free tokens if they kept their funds on the platform.

The next day, Nov. 8, Ellison appealed to the group for help on optics and public messaging.

She wrote, “multiple people internally asking me whether they should continue to make statements to external parties like ‘Alameda is solvent.’ should i suggest they stall instead? just stall on responding to their messages? or what?”

That’s the same day FTX issued a pause on all customer withdrawals. The price of FTT, FTX’s native token, plummeted by over 75%. Out of options, Bankman-Fried turned to Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao, who announced he’d signed a nonbinding letter of intent to acquire FTX.

On Nov. 9, Ellison again looked to the group for guidance about how to handle the now infamous all-hands meeting of Alameda’s roughly 30 employees.

She proposed saying, “Alameda is probably going to wind down” and that there was “no pressure” to stay but help with “stuff like making sure our lenders get paid” would be “super appreciated.”

Bankman-Fried suggested she say something about there “being a future of some sort for those who are excited.”

Author Michael Lewis, whose book profiling Bankman-Fried was published the day the trial began, was also the subject of some Signal exchanges.

In a chat on Jan. 5, 2022, Bankman-Fried alerted a group that included Ellison and Singh that Lewis would be coming to the Bahamas the next month to do reporting.

Ellison said her “instincts are more toward under the radar.” Bankman-Fried, a notorious press hound, responded, “same, except exactly the opposite.”

As the grand scheme collapsed months later, Ellison expressed a great deal of relief in a private chat with Bankman-Fried.

Ellison wrote, “this is the best mood I’ve been in in like a year tbh” (“tbh” is short for “to be honest”).

In three consecutive messages, Bankman-Fried responded, “wow,” “uh,” “congrats?”

Ellison wrote, “I think I just had an increasing dread of this day that was weighing on me for a long time, and now that it’s actually happening, it just feels great to get it over with one way or another.”