SBF Trial – Caroline Ellison’s second day of testimony included Thai sex workers, bribery and private messages with SBF

The sixth day of SBF’s trial mainly revolved around the continued testimony of the prosecution’s key witness, Alameda Research CEO Caroline Ellison.

Much of Ellison’s testimony was about financial documentation and the sister companies’ entangled finances, but the latter half was dedicated to further ground-breaking revelations about SBF’s ambitions and what really happened behind the scenes before FTX collapsed.

Ellison and SBF’s messages

Ellison spoke at length about an $800 million trading loss FTX incurred in 2021 due to a margin system glitch. However, when she confronted SBF about the issue, he insisted that Alameda absorb the loss to keep it off FTX’s records.

The courtroom was also presented with communications between Ellison and SBF from just days before FTX’s bankruptcy declaration. The messages between the two painted a picture of escalating panic surrounding the impending collapse of FTX.

Ellison recalled a particularly tense in-person exchange with SBF at their shared apartment in the Bahamas when SBF accused her of failing to hedge on certain trades sufficiently in early 2022. She described how SBF believed that this alleged oversight by her was the reason for Alameda’s dire financial situation.

Ellison’s legal entanglements with the government were also brought to light, including her guilty plea, the potential sentence of 110 years, and the need for her to compensate victims of FTX’s downfall.

Sex workers and bribes

Ellison testified that in 2021, the Chinese government froze a staggering $1 billion of Alameda’s funds held on crypto exchanges OKX and Huobi as part of an ongoing money laundering investigation.

The former Alameda CEO told the courtroom that one of SBF’s initial plans to retrieve the frozen funds involved accounts created under the identities of Thai sex workers, but it ended up failing. She claimed that former Alameda co-CEO Sam Trabucco was responsible for finding these individuals and their accounts.

SBF did not give up and turned to something even more controversial to gain access to the frozen funds. The most incendiary all

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Author: Assad Jafri

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