JANE ROSENBERG
- A jury was selected in Sam Bankman-Fried's criminal trial on Wednesday.
- The judge selected 12 jurors and six alternates out of a pool of 45 prospective jurors.
- The FTX cofounder is facing seven charges of fraud over the collapse of his cryptocurrency exchange.
Opening statements are set to begin Wednesday after a jury was chosen to hear the fraud trial of FTX cofounder Sam Bankman-Fried in New York City.
Judge Lewis A. Kaplan reduced a pool of 45 prospective jurors to a jury of 12 with six alternates just before opening statements were set to start at noon. The jury was expected to sit through the duration of a trial projected to last up to six weeks.
Some of Bankman-Fried's close associates are expected to testify in the trial, including FTX cofounder Gary Wang and former Alameda Research CEO and Bankman-Fried's on-and-off again girlfriend, Caroline Ellison.
Bankman-Fried has argued that he is not to blame for fraud that prosecutors allege in the seven charges brought against him since his arrest last December in the Bahamas.
Prosecutors say the California man defrauded thousands of investors and customers in his businesses of billions of dollars by siphoning off their money for his own uses, including financing his businesses, buying real estate and making big political contributions to try to influence government regulation of cryptocurrency.
Meanwhile, Bankman-Fried's defense lawyers insist their client had no criminal intent as he became famous in the crypto world while growing FTX and a related business, Alameda Research, into multibillion dollar heavyweights in the cryptocurrency industry.
Bankman-Fried became a target of investigators when FTX collapsed last November amid a rush of customers seeking to recover their deposits, less than a year after Bankman-Fried spent millions of dollars on the 2022 Super Bowl with celebrity advertisements promoting FTX as the "safest and easiest way to buy and sell crypto."
Bankman-Fried was extradited to the United States from the Bahamas after his arrest.
Originally under house arrest for nearly eight months, his $250 million bond was revoked and he was jailed in August after a judge concluded he'd tried to influence trial witnesses.
Insider reporter Grace Kay contributed to this report.