Sam Bankman-Fried is still not getting his prescribed dose of Adderall – impacting the disgraced crypto magnate’s ability to focus as he weighs the pivotal decision of whether to testify at his criminal fraud trial, his attorneys claim.
The 31-year-old ex-billionaire is receiving one dose of the stimulant in the early morning before court officers drive him from Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Center to the Manhattan federal courthouse where he’s standing trial on charges that he stole more than $8 billion from customers of his cryptocurrency exchange FTX.
Yet the Adderall wears off by the time the trial starts at 9:30 a.m., his lawyers say – allegedly leaving the former crypto golden boy unable to properly focus as a decision looms on whether he’ll take the stand.
“The defense has a growing concern that because of Mr. Bankman-Fried’s lack of access to Adderall, he has not been able to concentrate at the level he ordinarily would and that he will not be able to meaningfully participate in the presentation of the defense case,” Bankman-Fried’s lawyer Mark Cohen wrote to the court in a late Sunday filing.
Prosecutors, who have called Bankman-Fried’s ex-lover and business partner Caroline Ellison and other former FTX insiders as witnesses, are expected to wrap up their case in the next week or two.
Bankman-Fried will then need to decide whether to testify as a defense witness – which would also open up a chance for prosecutors to grill him on cross-examination.
The accused fraudster’s lawyers have proposed a potential solution to the Adderall issue: having jail officials give Bankman-Fried a 12-hour “extended release” 20 milligram dose in the morning.
But they wrote Sunday that it is “not clear” whether the jail will provide Bankman-Fried with the dose in time.
Emails and phone calls to the US Bureau of Prisons’ assistant general counsel have gone unanswered, the lawyers griped.
The attorneys have also asked Manhattan federal court Judge Lewis Kaplan to issue an order allowing the lawyers themselves to give Bankman-Fried Adderall in court during the trial.
The judge is expected to consider the request at some point on Monday.
Meanwhile, prosecutors on Monday morning called former FTX chief engineer Nashad Singh to the stand.
Singh, who is testifying as a government cooperator, ripped Bankman-Fried for “excessive” spending while he helmed FTX and its associated crypto hedge fund Alameda Research – including spending more than $1 billion in endorsement deals with celebrities like Tom Brady and Gisele Bündchen and on naming rights to the Miami Heat NBA basketball arena.
“It all reeked of excess and flashiness,” Singh testified. “It didn’t align with what I thought we were building the company for.”
