Sam Bankman-Fried will be no match for government prosecutors who will poke holes in his defense when he takes the stand in his criminal trial, says SkyBridge Capital founder Anthony Scaramucci.
In an Oct. 25 interview on CNBC’s “Last Call,” Scaramucci said the Department of Justice prosecutors will “point out all the contradictions” he believes Bankman-Fried has made which will “add years to his sentence.”
“He’s gonna get skinned alive, there’s no way to escape. He thinks he’s going to out-fox the prosecutors but they’re very, very well experienced with this stuff.”
Scaramucci believed there’s been a “whole revision of history” on Bankman-Fried as around a year ago he was thought of as a “congenial nerd who was going to give all his money away” but the testimony of former FTX executives showed “there was malevolence.”
“He thought he was going to take that money and he was so smart that he would out-trade the market and put the money back and end up as a half-a-trillionaire but it never works like that,” he added.
In September 2022 FTX Ventures acquired a 30% stake in SkyBridge which Scaramucci is trying to buyback from the now-bankrupt firm.
Scaramucci (middle left), Bankman-Fried (middle right) and Kevin O’Leary dining at a New York conference. Source: SALT
In January he told Cointelegraph he thought Bankman-Fried was “the Mark Zuckerberg of crypto” before the allegations that the former FTX CEO misappropriated customer funds.
On CNBC, Scaramucci said he took Bankman-Fried to heads of state which he was now “embarrassed” about but at the time he saw “a smart guy who was well intended.”
“He’s gonna get nailed here going on the stand” Scaramucci added. “It’s a very bad move for him.”