If you forget the details of this ten billion dollar theft, Sam Bankman-Fried ran a fraud/embezzlement/money-laundering operation. Clients bought various cyber-coins and left them in his care with his company FTX, like a bank.

Bankman-Fried wasn't just a banker, though. He was also an investor through his other company, Alameda.

And when he began racking up huge losses in Alameda's investments, he simply stole coins that had been left on deposit with him to make up the losses. Oh, he put in some nigh-worthless coins in their place, which, through chicanery, he has faked up to have some kind of on-paper value, but he was essentially replacing his clients' real wealth with fake pieces of paper that said "I will gladly buy you a hamburger on Tuesday, but not this coming Tuesday, one of the Tuesdays in Nevember, the month that never comes."

He is charged with eight counts, including fraud, conspiracy to commit fraud, wire fraud, and money-laundering.

Earlier in the trial, Sam Bankman-Fried took the stand in his own defense. Because Bankman-Fried inarguably took coins from his clients and replaced them with worthless fake coins, his only possible salvation lay in convincing the jury that he did not knowingly know what he doingly did. The old Hillary Clinton Classic defense.

"You're honor, I'm a fucking moron. I didn't know all the crimes I was committing were crimes and I didn't know what I was doing and I don't even know where I am right now. Are you my mommy? Me hungry, me want hamburgey. Please let me go now and tell James Comey thanks for the solid."

But his attempt to perpetrate yet another fraud, this one on the jury,
was a disaster. Observers wondered if Bankman-Fried had a terrible lawyer, or if his lawyer had a terrible client who insisted on testifying despite being an evasive lawyer with a soft, doughy, and yet rat-like face that posts on Craiglist's FSF (Face Seeking Fist) section.

But, as this writer asks: What choice did they have? Bankman-Fried did all the things the prosecutors say he did. He can only plead the Costanza Defense of, "Was that wrong? Because I tell you, when I started working here, if anyone had told me that was wrong, I would have avoided it."

The Humiliating Cross-Examination of Sam Bankman-Fried

By Joe Nocera

There are two big problems with SBF's defense. The first is that Ellison had made a persuasive case during her time on the stand that he was well aware of the problems, had directed most of what she did, and had lied about Alameda's increasingly difficult financial situation. "He directed me to commit these crimes," she testified.

The second problem was that, to put it bluntly, SBF is a terrible witness. He looked visibly nervous most of the time he was in the witness box. He often had his hands tucked between his legs. He rarely blinked. His voice rose as he spoke, making his answers sound like questions. He used a curt yep when a yes was called for, and nope instead of no. No one found his occasional efforts at humor funny. Whenever he tried to expand upon an answer, Judge Kaplan cut him down.

...

The assistant U.S. attorney leading the prosecution, Sassoon relies on a well-honed staccato to hit defendants with a relentless barrage of questions. That's what SBF was now facing, and what we were all here to see:

"Do you recall saying that FTX was safe?"

"Didn't you say in interviews that FTX had protection for customers?"

"Did you own 90 percent of Alameda?"

"Did you say in private, 'Fuck regulators?' "

"Did you call some customers 'dumb motherfuckers?' "

"Did you fly to the Super Bowl in a private plane?"

"Most FTX customers did not have a line of credit, correct?"

"Do you deny that Alameda had a $65 billion line of credit?"

And on, and on, and on.

Under the circumstances, SBF's wisest course would have been to just say yes--or yep--to her questions. And sometimes he did that. But just as often, he chose to dance around the question, to quibble about the phrasing, or say that he couldn't remember the details.

And every time he did that--every single time--Sassoon projected an email or video or a spreadsheet onto the screen, showing that he had done exactly what she was accusing him of doing. Which then gave the jurors another look at the evidence while reminding them that SBF was being something less than forthright. You'd think this MIT graduate would wise up, but he never did.

(He even equivocated on whether he had taken a private plane to the Super Bowl--to which Sassoon responded by presenting a photograph of SBF fast asleep in the embrace of a comfy chair on a private jet. In the overflow room, we burst into laughter.)

...

The trial is likely to go on another few days before the jury begins deliberating. But I'd seen enough. It was clear to almost everyone watching his testimony that Sam Bankman-Fried is a dead man walking.

FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried's spectacular rise and fall in the cryptocurrency industry -- a journey that included his testimony before Congress, a Super Bowl advertisement and dreams of a future run for president -- hit a new bottom Thursday when a New York jury convicted him of fraud in a scheme that cheated customers and investors of at least $10 billion.

After the monthlong trial, jurors rejected Bankman-Fried's claim during four days on the witness stand in Manhattan federal court that he never committed fraud or meant to cheat customers before FTX, once the world's second-largest crypto exchange, collapsed into bankruptcy a year ago.

...

In a closing argument, defense lawyer Mark Cohen said prosecutors were trying to turn "Sam into some sort of villain, some sort of monster."

"It's both wrong and unfair, and I hope and believe that you have seen that it's simply not true," he said. "According to the government, everything Sam ever touched and said was fraudulent."