Today marks the beginning of Sam Bankman-Fried’s criminal trial—and it’s all happening at New York’s U.S. Southern District courthouse on Pearl Street, where my colleague Ben Weiss will be spending the day.
Opening arguments won’t start until tomorrow, but today a crew of New Yorkers will be selected to comprise the jury and ultimately decide the fate of the startup industry’s now-disgraced crypto founder, Bankman-Fried.
The trial is expected to go on for the next six weeks or so, with trial dates scheduled until at least Nov. 9, according to the case calendar attached to the docket last week. The federal judge overseeing the case is Lewis A. Kaplan, who was appointed by President Bill Clinton to the federal district court in 1994 and who just recently presided over the civil case between writer E. Jean Carroll and former President Donald Trump.
Bankman-Fried is facing seven charges of fraud and money laundering surrounding the collapse of his FTX crypto exchange empire, which was backed by Sequoia Capital, Insight Partners, and SoftBank, and was once valued at a whopping $40 billion across both its U.S. and international operations. Bankman-Fried has pled not guilty to all counts.
As we wait for the trail to begin, my colleague Weiss has the details on the key players we can expect to see throughout the course of the trial, including Bankman-Fried’s attorneys, Mark Cohen and Christian Everdell, who are both former federal prosecutors and have represented the likes of Jeffrey Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell. Four of Bankman-Fried’s close colleagues, who accepted plea deals and are working with the government, will likely testify in coming weeks.
In other SBF news…Michael Lewis’ new book on Bankman-Fried and the FTX empire hits bookshelves today. An excerpt of the book, Going Infinite, was published yesterday in the Washington Post which you can read here. I’m on my way to go grab a copy and will give a review at some point in the near future.
And now for this month’s cartoon…
See you tomorrow,
Jessica Mathews
Twitter: @jessicakmathews
Email: jessica.mathews@fortune.com
Submit a deal for the Term Sheet newsletter here.
Joe Abrams curated the deals section of today’s newsletter.
