Former President Donald Trump and ex-cryptocurrency king Sam Bankman-Fried are among the high-profile fraud cases that will take the spotlight in 2024. Here are others the Washington Examiner will be keeping an eye on:
Sam Bankman-Fried, federal trial (March 11)
It's been a tough two years for the onetime crypto king who was partying with Hollywood A-listers, pop stars, and Super Bowl champions before his world crashed at the end of 2022.
The March 11 trial against the Massachusetts Institute of Technology graduate focuses on a scheme to bribe Chinese officials, as well as making more than 300 illegal political donations to U.S. lawmakers to influence cryptocurrency regulation.
Bankman-Fried is facing five charges, including bank fraud.
His one-time girlfriend, Caroline Ellison, the former CEO of Alameda Research, testified at his 2023 trial that the couple tried to bribe Chinese officials $100 million to regain access to more than $1 billion in frozen cryptocurrency so they could continue their con to cheat investors and customers out of their money.
Alameda Research, a crypto hedge fund Bankman-Fried owned but Ellison ran, had its funds frozen on Chinese crypto exchanges OKX and Huobi. Alameda was told that the funds were part of a money laundering investigation into a person who had traded with Alameda.
Ellison testified that she, Bankman-Fried, FTX co-founders Gary Wang and Nishad Singh, FTX Chief Operating Officer Constance Wang, and two other employees held multiple meetings about how to unfreeze the funds. One of the ways included using an employee's father, a Chinese government official, to see if he could use his influence to get it done.
When that didn't work, Alameda hired a lawyer to work with the Chinese government, but that was also futile. They even considered hiring Thai prostitutes and using their accounts to arrange trades with Alameda that they knew would be bad and would, therefore, transfer value away from Alameda's accounts and to the sex workers, Ellison testified. In part two of the bizarre plan, Alameda would reclaim the assets from the Thai prostitutes through nonfrozen accounts.
Federal prosecutors will also be taking Bankman-Fried to task for alleged attempts to grease the wheels in Congress by paying off lawmakers to go soft on the still largely unregulated cryptocurrency industry. He is being charged with conspiring to make more than 300 illegal political donations in the United States.
His trial could provide the public with a deeper look into which lawmakers took donations and if any actually gave them back.
Sam Bankman-Fried, sentencing in 2023 trial (March 28)
The wunderkind, who was celebrated on the Forbes billionaires list and living his best life in a penthouse in the Bahamas, has gone from a crypto king to a common criminal in a matter of months. The 31-year-old got a rude awakening in November when a New York jury found him guilty of securities fraud and six other criminal counts during his high-profile, monthlong trial in Manhattan. He faces more than a century behind bars at the March sentencing hearing.
Almost all in his inner circle turned their backs on Bankman-Fried during his trial, teaming up with federal prosecutors and providing damning testimony against him in exchange for lighter sentences.
At trial, Bankman-Fried took the stand in his defense, a risky move that did little to sway jurors.
He will be sentenced by Judge Lewis Kaplan of the Southern District of New York. The maximum punishment is 110 years for Bankman-Fried, who will turn 32 in March. However, the sentencing guidelines allow for some flexibility, so it's possible Kaplan goes easy on him, factoring in the severity of the offenses, Bankman-Fried's cooperation with federal investigators, and the judge's discretion.
Donald Trump, Georgia election fraud trial (Aug. 5, 2024)
Prosecutors in Georgia have proposed an Aug. 5 start date for Trump in the 2020 election interference case. The date falls only a few weeks after the Republican National Convention, and Trump, as of this publication, remains the front-runner for the GOP presidential nomination. A monthslong trial could stretch beyond the general election and throw the country's political process in turmoil.
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis wrote in a letter to the court that the Aug. 5 date "balances potential delays from Defendant Trump's other criminal trials in sister sovereigns and the other Defendants' constitutional speedy trial rights."
During an appearance at the Washington Post Live's Global Women's Summit, she added that the trial won't likely end before the 2024 election.
"I believe this trial will take many months, and I don't expect that we will conclude until the winter or the very early part of 2025," she said, adding that the case could likely be on appeals "for years" to come.
Trump and 18 other cohorts were indicted by an Atlanta grand jury in a racketeering case that alleges they orchestrated a criminal enterprise to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election unlawfully in Georgia in Trump's favor.
Four of the 18 people indicted with Trump have already pleaded guilty.
The former president has not.
Alex Mashinsky, former Celsius Network CEO, criminal fraud trial (Sept. 17, 2024)
Mashinsky, the founder and former chief of the now-bankrupt cryptocurrency lender Celsius Network, was charged in July with securities fraud, commodities fraud, wire fraud, and conspiracy in an alleged scheme to manipulate the value of his Celsius token. His company collapsed in 2022 with more than $1 billion in debt.
Similar to Bankman-Fried's case, at least one member of Mashinky's inner circle, Roni Cohen-Pavon, the company's chief revenue officer, has agreed to work with federal prosecutors in their case against the former CEO. Cohen-Pavon has already pleaded guilty to fraud charges.
There are three pretrial conferences in the case set for March, July, and September. Mashinsky will remain out on $40 million bail until trial.
Authorities allege he misled investors and duped users out of billions of dollars and claimed their investments were safe. In September, the court froze several of his assets, including his bank accounts and property.
At a pretrial hearing, lawyers hinted that at least part of their defense strategy would be to argue that cryptocurrency is not a security and, therefore, not applicable to the charges the government has brought against him.
"The law about what is a security is fluid," his defense attorney Robert Frenchman said.
Charlie Javice, accused of defrauding JPMorgan (October 2024)
Javice has been charged with defrauding JPMorgan of $175 million with her student aid startup Frank.
Prosecutors allege Javice concocted a plan to inflate the success, size, and market penetration of Frank to "induce" JPMorgan to acquire it. Javice repeatedly claimed her company had more than 4 million users, though it reportedly had only 250,000 to 300,000 accounts.
The government alleges Javice fabricated the number by giving the bank a list of fake names and emails, court documents showed.
Javice founded Frank in 2017, and JPMorgan acquired it in 2021. The bank also hired Javice and other Frank employees as part of the deal. Javice received more than $21 million for selling her equity stake in the startup and $20 million as a retention bonus, prosecutors said.
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She was charged with securities fraud, wire fraud, bank fraud, and conspiracy in May.
She has pleaded not guilty to the fraud charges and is out on bond.