Benzinga and Yahoo Finance LLC may earn commission or revenue on some items through the links below. Sam Bankman-Fried, who is currently serving a 25-year sentence for the FTX scam, alleged on Wednesday that the Justice Department under Joe Biden threatened key defense witnesses, preventing them from testifying that the exchange was solvent. Bankman-Fried, popularly known as SBF, filed a request for a new trial in a Manhattan court. The motion, filed on February 5, stated that Daniel Chapsky, former FTX head of partnerships, Ryan Salame, former FTX Digital Markets co-CEO, and Nishad Singh, former FTX engineering director, were “threatened” by the DOJ into silence or changing their statements. “My conviction should be thrown out,” SBF said in an X post, referencing the excerpts from the motion.
• The ‘ChatGPT of Marketing' Just Opened a $0.85/Share Round — 10,000+ Investors Are Already In SBF also targeted Judge Lewis Kaplan, the one who sentenced him to 25 years in prison, saying, “Judge Lewis Kaplan should recuse himself from this motion.” Interestingly, Kaplan also presided over President Donald Trump’s federal defamation trial brought by writer E. Jean Carroll, leading SBF to position the judge as a common adversary. New evidence shows that Biden's DOJ threatened multiple witnesses into silence or into changing their testimony. My conviction should be thrown out.
Judge Lewis Kaplan should recuse himself from this motion. Given his pattern of prejudging defendants—including me, @rsalame7926,… pic.twitter.com/MgT9GdPZqu Trending: You Saved for Retirement — But Do You Know What You'll Keep After Taxes? Is It The Case Of Suppressed Testimonies? SBF’s motion included a statement of support from Chapsky, who stated that he would have refuted “false claims” of FTX’s insolvency had he been allowed to testify. Unlike other FTX executives, Chapsky avoided legal consequences. Salame pleaded guilty to criminal fraud charges and was sentenced to 90 months in prison, while Singh avoided prison but was ordered to forfeit over $1 billion and to be supervised for three years. Notably, Singh testified against SBF as a prosecution witness. The new motion follows SBF’s claims that FTX was “never bankrupt,” blaming Sullivan & Cromwell lawyers for filing a bigus bankruptcy case.