According to a Wednesday report, Sam Bankman-Fried is expected to enter his plea on the fraud charges against him early next week. SBF was arrested in the Bahamas earlier this month and extradited to the United States soon after.
Sam Bankman-Fried to Enter His Plea on January 3rd
Sam Bankman-Fried who stands accused of multiple counts of fraud, money laundering, and other criminal charges by the SEC, the CFTC, and the DoJ is expected to enter his plea early in 2023. According to a report for Wednesday, he is scheduled to appear before Judge Lewis Kaplan in Manhattan on January 3rd.
Judge Kaplan was recently appointed to SBF’s case after the previous judge, Ronnie Abrams, recused herself due to a potential conflict of interest arising from the fact her husband is a partner in a law firm that advised FTX in 2021. Judge Kaplan also oversaw cases against former US president Donald Trump and UK’s Prince Andrew.
Sam Bankman-Fried was arrested and extradited to the United States due to numerous discoveries of questionable activities of his now-bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange FTX. SBF was released on a $250 million bail package last week. His closest associates Caroline Ellison and Gary Wang already pleaded guilty to charges against them and Ellison confirmed several allegations regarding shady loans given and concealed by Alameda Research.
Alameda Research’s Wallets Come to Life
Earlier on Wednesday, on-chain data revealed that FTX’s sister company, Alameda Research—one of the key players in the exchange’s collapse—went on a swapping spree. Some of the firm’s long-dormant wallets started dumping their contents and trading them for Bitcoin using cryptocurrency mixers.
Some of Alameda’s wallets swapped ERC-20 tokens for Ether (ETH) and Tether (USDT) before ultimately trading them for BTC. The company also offloaded Lido, Polygon, Uniswap, and other tokens before running them through the same gauntlet as the ERC-20s. On-chain researcher ZachXBT identified four wallets used by Alameda to store Bitcoin.
This activity quickly piqued the interest of the crypto community. Some were quick to call it foul play, while others believe that it simply represents the efforts of the bankruptcy team to secure as much of FTX’s assets as possible. Ben Armstrong, best known for his Youtube moniker Bitboy Crypto, made a Tweet indicating his belief that SBF is behind the swaps.
This article originally appeared on The Tokenist
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