FTX is still not recovered and its recently-resigned CEO, Sam Bankman-Fried, might be facing a sizeable legal peril soon.
If the anticipated lawsuit does happen, his game plan is to state in the court that he did not use his head and that his actions weren’t criminal. It was just his limited thinking.
“Mismanaging your company and losing a bunch of other people’s money is not criminal,” Randall Eliason, an ex-prosecutor who now teaches law at DC’s George Washington University, told Fortune. “It happens all the time. For a criminal case, there has to be deception.”
If someone wishes to punish Bankman-Fried with the help of law, they would need to establish that he did not have a malicious intent to commit a crime, instead, he was just being absolute worst at handling billions in crypto.
Eliason told the magazine that prosecutors will definitely come to the court with something significant that can lead to the understanding that SBF and FTX intended to deceive customers and the government. They could also do that by tracking his past behavior which establishes a history of fraudulent intent.
Experts say that it will not be long before the Justice Department prosecutors will be able to set up such a history, particularly if they bring a case under Section 1343, a federal criminal law that covers wire fraud but could be applied to electronically-aided fraud charges too.
Prosecution under Section 1343 carries a maximum 20-year prison sentence.
Currently, neither SBF nor any of his alleged members and/or fellow executives at FTX have been charged with any crime.