Disgraced crypto mogul Sam Bankman-Fried will still face seven criminal charges, prosecutors said on Tuesday in a letter to the judge overseeing the case—and a campaign finance charge is not going away.
The Complex Frauds and Cybercrime Unit at the Southern District of New York U.S. Attorney’s Office hit Bankman-Fried with eight charges in December. One of the charges—conspiracy to defraud the United States and violate the campaign finance laws—was dropped in July by the Justice Department.
The DOJ said today, however, that in addition to moving forward with the seven other criminal charges from the original indictment, prosecutors will include the alleged illegal finance scheme in another charge.
“The government writes to notify the Court and the defendant that it plans to seek a superseding indictment next week that will contain the seven counts that the government intends to prove at trial in October, which were the first seven charges of the original indictment,” Tuesday’s letter to Judge Lewis Kaplan read.
It added that it will “make clear” that “Bankman-Fried remains charged with conducting an illegal campaign finance scheme as part of the fraud and money laundering schemes originally charged.”
The original seven charges are: conspiracy to commit wire fraud on customers; wire fraud on customers; conspiracy to commit wire fraud on lenders; wire fraud on lenders; conspiracy to commit commodities fraud; conspiracy to commit securities fraud; and conspiracy to commit money laundering.
Bankman-Fried—better known in the crypto world as SBF—faces decades in prison if found guilty.
FTX was once perhaps the most famous crypto brand. The popular digital assets exchange had a deal with the Miami Heat, and former CEO and co-founder Bankman-Fried wined and dined politicians.
But the company quickly and unexpectedly went bust last November. Bankman-Fried was then arrested in the Bahamas in December. Prosecutors now allege the exchange was criminally mismanaged.
Bankman-Fried’s trial is expected to start in October.