Federal prosecutors A letter was written On Friday, Lewis Kaplan, U.S. District Judge, requested that Sam Bankman-Fried’s bail conditions be modified to ban private communications with Alameda Research and FTX employees.
Bankman-Fried contacted at least one FTX employee – Ryne Miller, current general counsel for FTX USA – in an attempt to influence his testimony as a witness.
“I would love to reconnect and find a way to have a constructive relation, use each other’s resources when necessary, or at minimum vet things,” Bankman-Fried wrote to Miller in a DOJ letter.
Prosecutors requested that Judge Kaplan stop Bankman-Fried’s use of “any encrypted or unencrypted call or messaging app, including Signal.”
Prosecutors wrote to the court that Bankman-Fried used Signal to contact Miller and other FTX employees – which prosecutors called “the very people who were until recently the defendant’s underlings whom he supervised, financially compensated and who are therefore most vulnerable for intimidation” – asking for permission to speak.
Prosecutors claimed that Bankman-Fried was trying to influence the public with a message. [Miller’s] Potential testimony,” which they called “particularly concerning” due to Miller’s firsthand knowledge of Bankman Fried’s conduct at the time of FTX collapse.
“[Miller] Participated in Signal and Slack communications during the relevant events of November 20,22 with the defendant and a small number of company insiders,” prosecutors stated. “Among other things, these messages contain the following: [Bankman-Fried] He gave instructions to liquidate Alameda’s investments in order to satisfy FTX customer withdraws. He indicated that he had transferred approximately $45million dollars of Alamedas funds over to FTX US to plug an apparent gap in FTX US’s balance sheet.
If true, the prosecutors’ claims would discredit Bankman-Fried’s ongoing declarations on social media that FTX US had been solvent when the rest of his empire fell apart.
Judge Kaplan was also informed by the prosecution that Caroline Ellison, former CEO of Alameda Research, testified that Bankman-Fried deliberately used Signal and Slack messages to auto-delete Signal messages and Slack messages in work communications. He knew that many legal cases depend on documentation and that it is harder to build a case if that information isn’t written down or preserved.”
Prosecutors stated that the autodeletion FTX and Alameda’s Slack and Signal communications has impeded Government’s investigation. Potential witnesses have described relevant and incriminating conversation with the defendant on Slack and Signal, which have been autodeleted due to settings that were set at the defendant’s request.”