Disgraced crypto king Sam Bankman-Fried may be a “dirtbag” who’s worse than notorious fraudster Bernie Madoff but he likely won’t stand trial, according to Fox News host Jeanine Pirro.
Bankman-Fried, the founder and CEO of the collapsed crypto exchange FTX, appeared in a Manhattan courtroom on Thursday after his extradition from the Bahamas where a judge ruled that he could be freed on $250 million bail and permitted to live at his parents’ $4 million California home until his trial.
That trial may never happen, at least in the opinion of Pirro who broke down the latest twist in the saga of the scandalous fall of the 30-year-old alleged swindler and top Democratic Party donor on Thursday’s edition of “The Five.”
Noting that the reason why the feds may have been dragging their feet while Bankman-Fried cooled his heels in a Bahamian prison was to first get his two closest associates, former FTX CTO Gary Wang and ex-girlfriend and Alameda Research CEO Caroline Ellison to flip on him, Pirro suggested that their testimony could also force SBF to cop a plea deal.
(Video: Fox News)
According to Pirro, “The feds clearly wanted to get these two to plead guilty to very similar charges. They had to meet the conditions of the plea deal. The conditions of the plea deal are that they testify and cooperate with the feds, incriminating Sam Bankman-Fried.”
“That was done and tied up last night, and as soon as they landed in New York, it was a done deal. What that means is that the chances of this going to trial are slim to none,” the former New York State judge and prosecutor said.
“Sam Bankman-Fried, he can’t get away with this by saying I didn’t know enough,” Pirro added. “He actually had no guidance, no regulation, no oversight, he used the money for himself.”
“The money that went to Alameda and his girlfriend was then used for lavish gifts and homes for himself and his family. His family, which I believe includes his parents, which is pretty crazy here,” referring to Joseph Bankman and Barbara Fried, both of whom are professors at Stanford University who have deep connections to the Democratic Party machine.
“In the end, this guy’s worse than Madoff,” she said of the mastermind who was allegedly behind the largest Ponzi scheme in U.S. history. “And the reason he’s worse than Madoff is that Madoff- the money’s much higher – but Madoff used an individual’s money to pay another individual, this Sam Bankman-Fried used the money for a lavish lifestyle for himself, his family and real estate.”
“He’s a dirtbag,” she concluded.
Panelist Will Cain suggested that the case is less about SBF than where he spent the money.
“I’m not talking about the homes or the lavish lifestyles. It’s the people that benefited from his largesse,” he said. “It is the media organizations that he funded were up to, I think, almost a half a dozen media organizations who were living in some part off of the funds from FTX.:
“It’s Democrat politicians who were getting big campaign donations from Sam Bankman-Fried. To me, this is the story,” Cain added.
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