“Thousands of ordinary people lost their savings,” prosecutors said in the trial Sam Bankman Fried this week, urging the judge to hand down the harshest punishment possible as the disgraced founder of the cryptocurrency exchange collapsed FTX he will be sentenced next week.
Bankman-Fried was convicted in November of seven counts of fraud and conspiracy related to the collapse of FTX. Before the March 28 ruling, judge Lewis Kaplan received memorandums of introduction from both parties.
Prosecutors, seeking $11 billion in compensation and up to 50 years in prison, say Bankman-Fried, “driven by greed and arrogance” repeatedly gambled other people’s money and that his education and privileged upbringing gave him they provided the knowledge that he knew he was acting illegally.
Defense lawyers argue that FTX investors will eventually get their money back and have asked Kaplan for leniency, suggesting a sentence of between five and six years.
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Pharmaceutical Securities Pump-and-Dumper Fined $7.2 Million
The Securities and Exchange Commission, which filed civil charges Kevin Dills and two entities he controlled that operated a fraudulent stock scheme obtained a final ruling in the case this week.
According to the SEC complaint, Dills would pay Giuseppe Padilla to organize sales of Oncology pharmacy ONPH stock, a company secretly controlled by Dills.
The shares were sold through two other Dills-controlled entities, Bright Star International and Life Sciences Journeys, the SEC said.
The shares were being promoted as Dills would use his controlling influence over Oncology Pharma, to make the company issue press releases to make its shares more attractive to investors.
The complaint alleged that Dills, by splitting his ownership of Oncology Pharma between two shell companies, transferring shares to Padilla, and then sharing the proceeds of Padilla’s illegal sales, had intentionally violated the registration requirements of federal securities law.
Dills agreed to a permanent sentence that will permanently bar him from trading penny stocks. The ruling ordered Dills to pay restitution of ill-gotten gains of $6.2 million and costs amounting to $1 million.
Fraud Forex Trader Fined $3.4 Million
This week the Commodity Futures Trading Commission issued a consent order imposing a permanent injunction and civil and restitution penalties against Giuseppe Carvajales for a total value of 3.4 million dollars.
Carvajales, who worked for The W Group allegedly made false statements to customers in relation to foreign exchange futures and options.
It is also alleged that he misled clients into believing that he had opened individual trading accounts into which client funds would be deposited. But in reality the accounts were never opened and the clients’ funds were stolen.
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Image created using artificial intelligence with Midjourney.