A United States judge has ruled that the Commodities and Futures Commission’s (CFTC) and Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) case against Sam Bankman-Fried be fixed for another time pending when his criminal cases are concluded. This ruling was in favor of a Justice Department motion submitted last week by Damian Williams, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York.
Sam Bankman-Fried, the former Chief Executive Officer (CEO) has a handful of criminal charges against him including defrauding customers and a violation of campaign finance laws. In addition, the CFTC charged the young billionaire for making deceptive assertions about the health status of his businesses and for also mishandling customers’ funds in a way that affected the prices of Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), and other assets.
Similarly, the SEC sued SBF for orchestrating a scheme to defraud equity investors in his cryptocurrency exchange FTX. However, prosecutors argued that it was a better option to postpone these lawsuits seeing that they are overlapping.
At the same time, they are considering the fact that the verdict of the criminal cases may eventually affect the other issues yet to be handled.
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In the meantime, these regulators would have to stay put, which is always the case when the Department of Justice files a parallel lawsuit.
Bankman-Fried has also consented to the ruling of U.S. District Judge Kevin Castel, although there are suspicions that the ex-CEO may collect evidence during the civil cases to impeach government witnesses, bypass discovery rules and in the end, come up with a defense plan.
The 30-year-old crypto innovator was arrested last year in the Bahamas based on an order from the United States authorities. He was held at the Fox Hill correctional center in Nassau for a few weeks before he was granted a $250 million bail bond. As part of the requirement of the bail bond, SBF’s traveling documents were seized as he is expected to remain in his parent’s residence in California.
In a later hearing at a New York Federal Court where he was extradited, Bankman-Fried pleaded not guilty to the criminal charges levied against him.
