The wheels of justice can turn quickly when conditions are right. Today the defense rested in the fraud trial of Sam Bankman-Fried. Closing arguments are scheduled for tomorrow, which means this case could go to the jury on Thursday. It’s possible, then, that we’ll have a verdict that same day. That would be one year exactly since crypto publication Coindesk broke the story about a key financial flaw in SBF’s crypto empire, which led in quick order to FTX’s collapse and then to SBF’s arrest.
SBF’s fall from hero to zero happened fast compared with many other business scandals. For example, the first press report questioning Enron’s finances appeared in The Wall Street Journal in late 2000, but the energy company didn’t go bankrupt until the end of 2001, and it wasn’t until mid-2006 that former Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling was convicted of conspiracy and securities fraud. The accounting fraud inside telecom giant…
