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- Sam Bankman-Fried laughed and shook his head during Caroline Ellison's testimony, prosecutor claims.
- The prosecutor asked Bankman-Fried's lawyer to tell his client to control his reactions.
- Ellison gave emotional testimony Wednesday and appeared to place the blame for FTX's collapse on SBF.
Caroline Ellison's testimony provoked a series of reactions from her ex-boyfriend Sam Bankman-Fried on Wednesday, a prosecutor said during a sidebar conversation.
Prosecutor Danielle Sassoon told the judge in Bankman-Fried's criminal trial that the FTX cofounder had "laughed, visibly shaken his head, and scoffed" while Ellison testified.
The sidebar conversation with Judge Lewis Kaplan and Bankman-Fried's defense attorney Mark Cohen was kept private from the jury, but revealed in a court transcript.
"It's possible it's having a visible effect on her, especially given the history of this relationship, the prior attempts to intimidate her, the power dynamic, their romantic relationship, and I would ask that defense counsel tell him to control his visible reactions to her testimony," Sassoon said, according to the transcript.
Bankman-Fried's lawyer called the request "ridiculous" and pointed out that Ellison struggled to identify Bankman-Fried in the courtroom when she first began testifying on Tuesday.
"The defendant is attending this trial," Cohen said, according to the transcript. "If he's having any reaction at all, that's for your Honor and the jury to decide."
For his part, Lewis said he'd not seen any unusual reactions from Bankman-Fried, but asked Cohen to talk with his client about the issue and said he would be keeping an eye on Bankman-Fried, as well.
"If he's doing anything then I would stop it; and if he's not, then no harm, no foul," the judge said.
On Wednesday, Ellison, the former CEO of Alameda Research and Bankman-Fried's on-and-off again girlfriend, appeared to place the blame for FTX's collapse on Bankman-Fried. She testified in the downtown Manhattan courtroom that Bankman-Fried repeatedly told her to work to convince Alameda's lenders that both FTX and its affiliated hedge fund were better off than they actually were.
"I was in a constant state of dread. I knew we'd have to take the money from our FTX line of credit, which could be called in at any time," Ellison said Wednesday, during a portion of the testimony where she was visibly emotional.
Ellison is heading into her third day of testifying in the criminal case against Bankman-Fried. The FTX cofounder is facing seven criminal charges of fraud and a potentially hefty prison sentence over allegations he defrauded FTX customers and investors out of billions of dollars.