FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried pleads not guilty to all fraud charges - report

Sam Bankman-Fried, the disgraced co-founder and CEO of the now-bankrupt FTX ( FTT-USD ) cryptocurrency exchange, pleaded not guilty to all criminal charges in federal court, as expected, Reuters reported Tuesday. The onetime billionaire, before U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan in Manhattan, entered his plea to eight criminal counts ranging from wire fraud to conspiracy to pursue money laundering, Reuters noted. If convicted, the 30-year-old, who has been accused of defrauding investors and FTX customers, could face up to 115 years in prison. Kaplan was said to have set an October 2 trial date and a federal prosecutor noted that the SBF trial could last about four weeks. The widely expected move came shortly after two of Bankman-Fried's associates, Gary Wang, FTX's former chief technology officer and co-founder, and Caroline Ellison, the former CEO of Bankman-Fried's trading firm, pled guilty to fraud charges and agreed to cooperate with U.S. prosecutors to build a case against SBF. In her plea hearing on December 19, Ellison admitted that she conspired with others to use billions of dollars of customers' funds from Bankman-Fried's failed trading platform. On December 22, SBF was released on a $250M bond and was subsequently spotted at his parents' home in Palo Alto, California where he remained under house arrest .