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US prosecutors have accused FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried of leaking personal writings by Caroline Ellison, the former head of the cryptocurrency exchange’s affiliated hedge fund Alameda Research and a crucial witness in the criminal case against him, to The New York Times.
In a letter filed to a Manhattan federal court late on Thursday, the government said Bankman-Fried had attempted to “interfere with a fair trial by an impartial jury” by discrediting Ellison, who pleaded guilty to fraud last year and agreed to collaborate with law enforcement.
In a piece published by The New York Times on Thursday, Ellison was reported to have written in a private document in February 2022 that she was “feeling pretty unhappy and overwhelmed with [her] job”.
She is reported to have added: “At the end of the day I can’t wait to go home and turn off my phone and have a drink and get away from it all.”
Ellison met Bankman-Fried while they were both traders at Wall Street firm Jane Street, and went on to join him at his cryptocurrency exchange in 2019, where she ran trading firm Alameda Research.
After FTX’s collapse last year, prosecutors alleged that Alameda had illegally gambled with billions of dollars worth of FTX customer deposits. Ellison, whose plea agreement with the US government was announced while Bankman-Fried was on a plane from the Bahamas, having agreed to be extradited to New York, told a judge in December that the firm had access to “an unlimited line of credit on FTX.com” and she “knew that it was wrong”.
Alameda’s arrangement with FTX was concealed from both FTX customers and investors, Ellison said under oath last year. She is set to be one of several star witnesses in Bankman-Fried’s trial in October, along with former FTX co-founder Gary Wang and former FTX engineer Nishad Singh, who have also pleaded guilty in criminal cases against them.
In their letter late on Thursday, prosecutors said Bankman-Fried’s lawyer had confirmed that the entrepreneur had met with a New York Times journalist in person and had shared documents with that person.
They said the “effect, if not the intent” of the leak was “not only to harass Ellison, but also to deter other potential trial witnesses from testifying”.
Prosecutors highlighted how the article addressed “the pain associated with [Ellison’s] romantic break up with the defendant, and her professional insecurities”. The piece quoted a Google document sent to Bankman-Fried last April which referenced their romance, in which Ellison wrote that the break-up “significantly decreased my excitement about Alameda”.
A spokesperson for Bankman-Fried and lawyers for Ellison did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The New York Times declined to comment.
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