SBF Lawyers Call Testimonies Of Wang, Singh Inconsistent, Want FBI Agents Who Interviewed Them To Testify

Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) will testify at his criminal trial Thursday. However, before that, the defense team wants FBI agents Luke Booth and Kristin Allain to take the stand to prove the inconsistencies in the statement of Bankman-Fried’s previous lieutenants — Gary Wang and Nishad Singh.

The public will preview Bankman-Fried’s defense team’s strategy this week, after the latter took a lashing for several days from the prosecution, as Bankman-Fried continued to be painted as the mastermind in a series of schemes that misused customers, investors and lenders’ funds.

Bankman-Fried’s team wanted to include the original interviews of FTX co-founder Wang and director of engineering Singh with the FBI and summon the agents to testify, as the defense was of the opinion that both crypto executives gave inconsistent testimonies while on the stand.

Both Wang and Singh “denied having made or claimed not to recall having made the statements” present in their earlier interviews with the FBI, the defense team claimed in a letter sent to the judge Wednesday.

Moreover, Bankman-Fried’s lawyers cited that Wang has told the FBI “the allow-negative flag was added to Alameda as part of their role as a market maker,” while testifying in court that market-making was not the only purpose of the said feature

Wang, who previously worked at Google Flights before he became a crypto billionaire while at FTX and Alameda Research, was currently cooperating with the government and, according to Bankman-Fried’s lawyers, might be “pressured or incentivized to minimize an innocent explanation for special codebase features that benefited Alameda.”

The defense also alleged that Singh had earlier admitted he was blindsided and felt horrible upon learning about the $8 billion hole in FTX’s balance sheet. However, when interviewed by the FBI, he had “hazy” memories, particularly when recalling some events in the summer of 2022, even though he later provided a detailed recollection of things in court.

“Mr. Singh may feel obliged to support the Government’s narrative around events in June 2022, even though he had previously claimed to have a ‘hazy’ memory of that specific time period,” the defense’s letter read.

Moreover, the defense team also accused Singh of changing his mind or moral compass when he bought a $3.7 million vacation house in the Bahamas weeks before the crypto empire collapsed, but had testified that Bankman-Fried’s purchases were “egregious, unnecessary, and selfish.”

Bankman-Fried, who was a crypto billionaire and used to run a billion-dollar crypto empire, will also take the stand on Thursday, as confirmed by his lawyer Mark Cohen.

“We’re going to present three witnesses before calling our client,” Cohen said during a Wednesday conference call, as reported by Inner City Press.