Sam Bankman-Fried’s lawyers say he needs higher Adderall dose at trial

Sam Bankman-Fried has demanded a higher Adderall dose to focus at his fraud trial and decide whether to testify in his own defense, his lawyers said. In a letter to U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan, Bankman-Fried’s lawyers said the one dose of Adderall the disgraced FTX cryptocurrency exchange founder is being given is not enough. The 31-year-old is supplied with one dose in jail early each morning to treat his attention deficit hyperactivity disorder – but it wears off by the time the trial 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 kicked off on October 3 in Manhattan Federal Court, Bankman-Fried has been seen during testimony typing on a laptop and whispering to his lawyers. His lawyers have now even suggested adjourning his federal trial for a full day until the medication dosage could be sorted out.

Court filings state that he takes 10mg of Adderall, three to four times a day. The maximum recommended adult daily dose of Adderall, both immediate release and extended-release, is 40mg. Some doctors may recommend up to 60mg spread across the day to treat narcolepsy. When his bail was revoked and he was put into a jail cell in Brooklyn, he struggled with accessing the prescription drug – and his lawyers claimed he did not get his medication for 11 days. Previously, prosecutors accused the former billionaire of laughing during the testimony of star witness Caroline Ellison, his 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. He argues that while he made mistakes running the exchange, he did not steal money. Prosecutors have said they may rest their case as soon as October 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 December 12, 2022 arrest, and shared Ellison´s private writings with a New York Times reporter.

Kaplan said that likely amounted to witness tampering on August 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. FTX, which was worth $32 billion at its peak, collapsed in November last year amid falling crypto prices and media reports raising questions about its finances.

Last week in court, the ex-girlfriend of the FTX founder told a jury that he donated $10 million to Joe Biden’s campaign to gain ‘influence’. Assistant US Attorney Danielle Sasson asked Caroline Ellison what Bankman-Fried said about spending money on politics. The 28-year-old daughter of two MIT economics professors testified at a court in New York as the star witness for the prosecution against Bankman-Fried. She was head of Alameda’s sister company FTX, which was allegedly used as a $10 billion slush fund paid for by FTX customers’ money. Ellison said: ‘He thought it was very effective, you could get very high returns in terms of influence by spending relatively small amounts of money.

‘He donated $10 million to (Joe) Biden and that was a relatively small amount of money. He felt that was something that got him influence and recognition.’ Sassoon asked Ellison to describe the ‘nature of your personal relationship’ with Bankman-Fried. She said: ‘I would say the whole time we were dating he was also my boss at work which created some awkward situations. ‘My general feeling (was) I wanted more from our relationship and often felt he was distant or not paying attention to me.’ Asked why she eventually broke up with Bankman-Fried, Ellison said: ‘Because of those things I mentioned. I felt he wasn’t spending much time on the relationship’. Bankman-Fried also thought lying and stealing were okay because of his philosophical outlook on the world, the court heard.

In court assistant US Attorney Danielle Sassoon asked Ellison: ‘In the course of working with the defendant, did he talk to you about the ethics of lying and stealing?’ Ellison said: ‘He was a utilitarian and believed that the ways people try to justify rules like ‘don’t lie’ and ‘don’t steal’ in utilitarianism don’t work. ‘The only moral rule that matter was to maximize utility, trying to create the greatest good for the greatest number of beings. Asked how lying and stealing fit into this, Ellison said: ‘He didn’t think rules like don’t lie or don’t steal fit into that framework.’ Sassoon asked how that attitude affected Ellison. She said: ‘It made me more willing to do things like lie and steal over time.

‘When I started working at Alameda I don’t think I’d have believed if you told me a few years later I’d be sending false balance sheets to our lenders. Over time I think it was something I became more comfortable with’. She also said that Bankman-Fried, her ex-boyfriend, ‘directed me to commit these crimes’ in the crypto titan’s highly anticipated fraud trial. When Ellison was asked if she committed the crimes alone, she told the court in New York: ‘No, they were committed with Sam.’ Ellison testified that Bankman-Fried ‘directed me’ to commit fraud. She said that Bankman-Fried told her to take $14 billion from the failed crypto exchange’s customers to repay the loans of its sister company, which she ran.

She told the court that SBF weirdly bragged to her that there was a ‘five percent chance that he’d become president someday’. Federal Prosecutor Danielle Sassoon asked: ‘President of what?’ ‘The United States,’ Ellison responded. Ellison’s testimony came after FTX co-founder Gary Wang testified against Bankman-Fried as part of his own plea deal. The company’s head of engineering, Nishad Singh, is also expected to testify later in the trial. Read the full story:https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12636117/Sam-Bankman-Fried-Adderall.html?ito=msngallery

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