NEW YORK : The decision by U.S. prosecutors on Wednesday to drop a campaign finance charge against Sam Bankman-Fried may keep his trial focused on what the government considers his main crime: stealing billions of dollars from cryptocurrency customers at his now-bankrupt FTX exchange.
That decision came after the Bahamas, where FTX was based and Bankman-Fried was arrested in December, told the U.S. Attorney's office in Manhattan it had not intended to extradite Bankman-Fried on that charge. Mark Kasten, a lawyer at Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney in Philadelphia, said dropping the campaign finance charge could help Bankman-Fried by letting his lawyers"focus their narrative" on the fraud case.
Bankman-Fried rose to prominence as an entrepreneur promising safety in volatile cryptocurrencies and as a prolific donor, mainly to Democrats, in the 2022 U.S. midterm elections.