NEW York – Sam Bankman-Fried needs a higher Adderall dose to focus at his fraud trial and decide whether to testify in his own defense, his lawyers said.
In a late Sunday letter to U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan, Bankman-Fried’s lawyers said the one dose of Adderall the FTX cryptocurrency exchange founder is being given at jail early each morning to treat his attention deficit hyperactivity disorder wears off by the time the trial day starts.
“As we approach the defense case and the critical decision of whether Mr. Bankman-Fried will testify, the defense has growing concern that because of Mr. Bankman-Fried’s lack of access to Adderall he has not been able to concentrate at the level he ordinarily would,” his lawyers wrote.
Since his trial on charges of stealing billions of dollars in FTX customer funds kicked off on Oct. 3 in Manhattan federal court, Bankman-Fried has been seen during testimony typing on a laptop and whispering to his lawyers.
Prosecutors accused the 31-year-old former billionaire of laughing during the testimony of star witness Caroline Ellison, the onetime chief executive officer of his Alameda Research hedge fund and former girlfriend. His lawyer, Mark Cohen, called that charge “ridiculous.”
Bankman-Fried has pleaded not guilty to two counts of fraud and five conspiracy counts tied to FTX’s November 2022 collapse, arguing that while he made mistakes running the exchange, he did not steal money.
Prosecutors have said they may rest their case as soon as Oct. 26. Defendants in U.S. criminal cases have no obligation to present evidence, and taking the stand carries the risk of being subjected to probing cross-examination by prosecutors.
But Bankman-Fried has defied the conventional playbook for white collar defendants of remaining largely silent. He published blog posts a month after his Dec. 12, 2022 arrest, and shared Ellison’s private writings with a New York Times reporter.
Kaplan said that likely amounted to witness tampering on Aug. 11 and remanded him to Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Center.
In their letter, Bankman-Fried’s lawyers proposed he be given a 12-hour extended release dose of Adderall before he leaves for the courthouse each morning. They said an MDC lawyer had not responded to their emails or calls.
The Federal Bureau of Prisons, which runs MDC, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
(Reporting by Luc Cohen in New York; Editing by Nick Zieminski)
