Caroline Ellison Says She and Sam Bankman-Fried Have been ‘Dishonest’

Caroline Ellison, who was a high adviser to the disgraced cryptocurrency govt Sam Bankman-Fried, mentioned on Wednesday that he directed her to ship “dishonest” stability sheets to main lenders of the buying and selling agency she ran for him.

In her second day testifying in Mr. Bankman-Fried’s legal fraud trial, Ms. Ellison mentioned she ready the phony stability sheets in the summertime of 2022 to hide that the cryptocurrency buying and selling agency, Alameda Analysis, had borrowed billions of {dollars} from prospects of FTX, the cryptocurrency trade that Mr. Bankman-Fried additionally managed.

“Sure, I did think about it to be dishonest,” mentioned Ms. Ellison, 28, who additionally dated Mr. Bankman-Fried. She mentioned Alameda’s monetary statements “hid the very fact we had been borrowing $10 billion from FTX prospects” and that the agency had no strategy to pay that cash again.

The testimony from Ms. Ellison, the federal government’s star witness, constructed on the account she gave in court docket on Tuesday, when she mentioned Mr. Bankman-Fried had repeatedly instructed her to commit crimes. The trial has turn out to be a referendum on the unstable cryptocurrency business, with Mr. Bankman-Fried rising as a logo of its freewheeling, high-risk practices.

Within the courtroom, Mr. Bankman-Fried, 31, didn’t visibly react to Ms. Ellison’s testimony. Throughout a break in proceedings, he glanced at a bunch of reporters sitting within the gallery, and raised his eyebrows.

Mr. Bankman-Fried has been charged with orchestrating a scheme to show FTX, which filed for chapter final yr, into his private piggy financial institution. Authorities contend he stole as a lot as $10 billion from FTX prospects to finance enterprise capital investments, purchase luxurious actual property, make marketing campaign donations and repay lenders to Alameda.

Ms. Ellison, who was Alameda’s chief govt, has admitted that she served as considered one of Mr. Bankman-Fried’s major accomplices by channeling FTX buyer funds into Alameda’s coffers. In December, she pleaded responsible to fraud and conspiracy and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors in return for leniency. Gary Wang and Nishad Singh, two high FTX executives, additionally pleaded responsible and are cooperating with the federal government.

Mr. Bankman-Fried, who has pleaded not responsible, may face what would quantity to a life sentence in jail if he’s convicted.

Of Mr. Bankman-Fried’s high advisers, Ms. Ellison has confronted by far essentially the most scrutiny. She and Mr. Bankman-Fried dated on and off whereas FTX grew right into a $32 billion behemoth. On Tuesday, Ms. Ellison recounted intimate particulars of their relationship, together with the tensions that it precipitated at work.

When she returned to the stand on Wednesday, Ms. Ellison instructed jurors that FTX’s funds started falling aside in spring 2022 when the crypto market crashed.

Ms. Ellison mentioned she stored detailed spreadsheets that confirmed simply how a lot Alameda owed its lenders and the extent of its reliance on FTX prospects to pay down these loans within the worst-case state of affairs. She mentioned she shared her evaluation with Mr. Bankman-Fried.

The worst case state of affairs occurred in June 2022, when lots of Alameda’s lenders started asking for his or her a reimbursement. Alameda’s personal crypto belongings had plunged in worth in the course of the market downturn, that means the agency had little strategy to pay again lenders, forcing it to make use of FTX buyer cash.

“I used to be in type of a relentless state of dread at that time,” Ms. Ellison testified. She mentioned that she was involved that if the usage of FTX buyer funds turned public, “all the things would come crashing down.”

Mr. Bankman-Fried directed her to faucet FTX buyer funds to repay Alameda’s lenders and was totally supportive of the thought, she mentioned. Ms. Ellison mentioned she adopted the directions despite the fact that “I knew it was fallacious.”

To hide Alameda’s fragile monetary state, Ms. Ellison mentioned Mr. Bankman-Fried had instructed her to present one of many agency’s greatest lenders — a crypto agency known as Genesis — a deceptive stability sheet in summer time 2022.

“I didn’t wish to be dishonest, however I additionally did not need them to know the reality,” she mentioned. Alameda would have gone bankrupt if it defaulted on its loans, she mentioned, and utilizing FTX buyer funds gave it an opportunity to interchange that cash with out anybody discovering out.

Ms. Ellison mentioned she and Mr. Bankman-Fried had been involved that in the event that they gave Genesis an correct stability sheet that confirmed Alameda owed $9 billion to FTX for its buyer borrowing, it would turn out to be public and destabilize Alameda and FTX.

At “Sam’s route,” she mentioned, she despatched the deceptive stability sheet to Genesis. She testified that she despatched related “dishonest” stability sheets to different lenders earlier than FTX’s collapse.

Throughout a heated dialog with Mr. Bankman-Fried in August 2022, she broke down and cried when he blamed her for Alameda’s monetary troubles, she testified. He accused her of not taking sufficient measures earlier within the yr to cut back Alameda’s buying and selling dangers within the crypto market.

”He was talking loudly and strongly,” she mentioned. “I received very upset, began crying and I had bother persevering with the dialog.”