The SBF Trial Week 3: FTX's Top Lawyer Testifies, The Judge Loses Patience

FTX spent billions on celebrity endorsements and a judge who's losing his patience. Welcome to the special Sam Bateman free trial edition of Coin Desk Daily. I'm your host, Jens Asi. The third week of Saman Fried's criminal trial has come to an end. The trial is on break until October 26th. Here's what happened this week. Former FTX engineering chief, Nishad Singh took the stand to testify against his former roommate. He said he learned that Alameda research owed 13 billion dollars to FTX customers in September 2022 after confronting Beman Fried about the quote enormous haul. Singh said he was told that they would raise more funds and cut costs. Singh pleaded guilty to charges related to conspiracy and fraud in February. So where did billions disappear to? Jurors were shown spreadsheets and flow charts detailing over a billion dollars in FTX endorsement deals which included arrangements with Tom Brady, Larry David and the naming rights to the Miami Heat's basketball arena. Prosecutors also said customer funds were used to buy real estate and donate millions to us political campaigns. FTX top lawyer also took the stand. K's son testified that SBF asked him to come up with quote legal justifications for why it was missing billions in customer funds just four days before the company declared bankruptcy. He said that the firm was in talks with Apollo an investment fund for emergency capital to cover customer withdrawals. After seeing financial statements, the investment fund asked for a legal justification for the missing funds. So said he could not identify any such justification. Lawyers for Beman Fried asked for an adjournment this week so that their clients could get access to his prescription of Adderall. In a letter to the judge, the defense wrote that without his medication, Beman Fried has quote, not been able to concentrate at the level he ordinarily would and quote, judge Kaplan denied the request saying he had not observed an issue. Saint John's University law professor Anthony Sabino joined Coindesk TV, earlier this week to weigh in the defense is saying that uh Samuel Beckman Fried has not been getting his Adderall medication. And that I think is quite fascinating because what they might be trying to do is say, well, again, the legal point would be if he's not receiving his appropriate medication to deal with his attention, attention deficit syndrome or whatever it may be. Uh that means that he can, does not understand what's going on around him. Therefore, he cannot fully participate in his own defense. And they could be trying to position this for an issue on an appeal. Sabino who has appeared before judge Kaplan in the past said the judge is a no nonsense judge. It appears both the prosecution and defense are experiencing this firsthand google records custodian Coy Gaddis was called to the stand to testify about metadata in a google sheet. During cross examination. The witness admitted that he was not a metadata. The judge scolded both the prosecution and defense for wasting the jury's time and said calling the witness to the stand was a quote joke. That's a wrap for coin desk daily. Get all the updates on the Sam Bateman free trial on coindesk dot com. Don't forget to sign up for the SPF trial newsletter and we'll see you next week.