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Caroline Ellison, key witness in FTX fraud case, set to be sentenced
Court Watch |
2024/09/24 21:42
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Caroline Ellison, a former top executive in Sam Bankman-Fried ’s fallen FTX cryptocurrency empire, faces the possibility of years in prison when she is sentenced Tuesday for fraud, but prosecutors said she deserves leniency for her “extraordinary cooperation” as they investigated the company.
Ellison, 29, pleaded guilty nearly two years ago and testified against Bankman-Fried for nearly three days at a trial last November.
In a court filing, prosecutors said said her testimony was the “cornerstone of the trial” against Bankman-Fried, 32, who was found guilty of fraud and sentenced to 25 years in prison.
Asking the court for a lighter sentence, Ellison’s own lawyers cited both her testimony at the trial and the trauma of her off-and-on romantic relationship with Bankman-Fried — though they also stressed that she wasn’t trying to evade responsibility for her crimes.
“Caroline blames no one but herself for what she did,” her lawyers wrote in a court filing. “She regrets her role deeply and will carry shame and remorse to her grave.”
FTX was one of the world’s most popular cryptocurrency exchanges, known for its Superbowl TV ad and its extensive lobbying campaign in Washington, before it collapsed in 2022.
U.S. prosecutors accused Bankman-Fried and other top executives of looting customer accounts on the exchange to make risky investments, make millions of dollars of illegal political donations, bribe Chinese officials and buy luxury real estate in the Caribbean.
Ellison was chief executive at Alameda Research, a cryptocurrency hedge fund controlled by Bankman-Fried that was used to process some customer funds from FTX.
Her work relationship with Bankman-Fried was complicated by her romantic feelings for him, her lawyers wrote in a court filing.
“From the start, Mr. Bankman-Fried’s behavior was erratic and manipulative. He initially professed strong feelings for Caroline and suggested their liaison would develop into a full relationship. But after a few weeks, he would ‘ghost’ Caroline without explanation, avoiding her outside of work and refusing to respond to messages that were not work-related,” her lawyers said.
As the business began to faulter, Ellison divulged the massive fraud to employees who worked for her even before FTX filed for bankruptcy, her lawyers wrote.
Ultimately, she also spoke extensively with U.S. investigators. |
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Algerian court certifies Tebboune’s landslide reelection win
Court Watch |
2024/09/14 18:06
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Algeria’s constitutional court on Saturday certified the landslide victory of President Abdelmadjid Tebboune in last weekend’s election after retabulating vote counts that he and his two opponents had called into question.
The court said that it had reviewed local voting data to settle questions about irregularities that Tebboune’s opponents had alleged in two appeals on Monday.
“After verification of the minutes of the regions and correction of the errors noted in the counting of the votes,” it had lowered Tebboune’s vote share and determined that his two opponents had won hundreds of thousands more votes than previously reported, said Omar Belhadj, the constitutional court’s president.
The court’s decision makes Tebboune the official winner of the Sept. 7 election. His government will next decide when to inaugurate him for a second term.
The court’s retabulated figures showed Tebboune leading Islamist challenger Abdellali Hassan Cherif by around 75 percentage points. With 7.7 million votes, the first-term president won 84.3% of the vote, surpassing 2019 win by millions of votes and a double-digit margin.
Cherif, running with the Movement of Society for Peace, won nearly 950,000 votes, or roughly 9.6%. The Socialist Forces Front’s Youcef Aouchiche won more than 580,000 votes, or roughly 6.1%.
Notably, both challengers surpassed the threshold required to receive reimbursement for campaign expenses. Under its election laws, Algeria pays for political campaigns that receive more than a 5% vote share. The results announced by the election authority last week showed Cherif and Aouchiche with 3.2% and 2.2% of the vote, respectively. Both were criticized for participating in an election that government critics denounced as a way for Algeria’s political elite to make a show of democracy amid broader political repression.
Throughout the campaign, each of the three campaigns emphasized participation, calling on voters and youth to participate and defy calls to boycott the ballot. The court announced nationwide turnout was 46.1%, surpassing the 2019 presidential election when 39.9% of the electorate participated.
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A man who attacked a Nevada judge in court pleads guilty but mentally ill
Court Watch |
2024/09/06 22:20
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A man whose courtroom attack on a judge in Las Vegas was recorded on video has pleaded guilty but mentally ill to attempted murder and other charges.
Deobra Delone Redden ended his trial Thursday after Clark County District Court Judge Mary Kay Holthus testified that she feared for her life when Redden vaulted over her bench and desk and landed on her. The attack happened Jan. 3 as Holthus was about to deliver Redden’s sentence in a separate felony attempted battery case.
Redden’s defense attorney, Carl Arnold, said in a statement Friday that the plea “reflects a delicate balance between accepting responsibility for a regrettable incident and recognizing the impact of Mr. Redden’s untreated mental illness at the time.”
Arnold told jurors who began hearing evidence on Tuesday that Redden had not taken prescribed medication to control his diagnosed schizophrenia. Holthus testified that she felt “defenseless” during the attack and that court officials and attorneys who came to her aid saved her life, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported.
Law clerk Michael Lasso told the jury he saw Holthus’ head hit the floor and Redden grab her hair. “I absolutely thought, ‘He’s going to kill her,’” Lasso testified. He said he wrestled Redden away, punched him to try to subdue him and saw Redden hitting a corrections officer who also intervened.
An armed courtroom marshal suffered a bleeding gash on his forehead and a dislocated shoulder, according to court officials and witnesses. Holthus was not hospitalized and returned to work after treatment for her injuries. A prosecutor for more than 27 years, she was elected to the state court bench in 2018.
Redden, 31, is already serving prison time for other felony battery convictions. Prosecutor John Giordani said Friday he could face up to 86 years for his pleas to eight felonies, which also included battery of a protected person age 60 or older resulting in substantial bodily harm, intimidating a public officer and battery by a prisoner.
Clark County District Court Judge Susan Johnson ruled that Redden was competent and capable of entering his plea, the Review-Journal reported. Sentencing was scheduled for Nov. 7.
Arnold said in his statement that he will ask Johnson to order mental health treatment for his client behind bars.
Giordani said Redden told three correctional staff members after the attack that he tried to kill Holthus.
“While he clearly has past mental issues, he made a choice that day and failed to control his homicidal impulses,” the prosecutor said. |
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Court orders new hearing for Adnan Syed in ‘Serial’ murder case
Court Watch |
2024/08/28 03:36
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A 2022 court hearing that freed Adnan Syed from prison violated the legal rights of the victim’s family and must be redone, Maryland’s Supreme Court ruled Friday, marking the latest development in the ongoing legal saga that gained global attention years ago through the hit podcast “Serial.”
The 4-3 ruling means Syed’s murder conviction remains reinstated for the foreseeable future. It comes about 11 months after the court heard arguments last October in a case that has been fraught with legal twists and divided court rulings since Syed was convicted in 2000 of killing his high school ex-girlfriend Hae Min Lee.
Syed has been free since October 2022, and while the Supreme Court's ruling reinstates his convictions, the justices did not order any changes to his release.
The court concluded that in an effort to remedy what was perceived to be an injustice to Syed, prosecutors and a lower court “worked an injustice” against Lee’s brother, Young Lee. The court ruled that Lee was not treated with “dignity, respect, and sensitivity,” because he was not given reasonable notice of the hearing that resulted in Syed being freed.
The court ruled that the remedy was “to reinstate Mr. Syed’s convictions and to remand the case to the circuit court for further proceedings.”
The court also said Lee would be afforded reasonable notice of the new hearing, “sufficient to provide Mr. Lee with a reasonable opportunity to attend such a hearing in person,” and for him or his counsel to be heard.
In a dissenting opinion, Justice Michele Hotten wrote that “this case exists as a procedural zombie.”
“It has been reanimated, despite its expiration,” Hotten wrote. “The doctrine of mootness was designed to prevent such judicial necromancy.”
The latest issue in the case pitted recent criminal justice reform efforts against the legal rights of crime victims and their families, whose voices are often at odds with a growing movement to acknowledge and correct systemic issues, including historic racism, police misconduct and prosecutorial missteps.
The panel of seven judges weighed the extent to which crime victims have a right to participate in hearings where a conviction could be vacated. To that end, the court considered whether to uphold a lower appellate court ruling in 2023 in favor of the Lee family. It reinstated Syed’s murder conviction a year after a judge granted a request from Baltimore prosecutors to vacate it because of flawed evidence.
Syed, 43, has maintained his innocence and has often expressed concern for Lee’s surviving relatives. The teenage girl was found strangled to death and buried in an unmarked grave in 1999. Syed was sentenced to life in prison, plus 30 years.
Syed was released from prison in September 2022, when a Baltimore judge overturned his conviction after city prosecutors found flaws in the evidence. |
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