Sam Bankman-Fried may have trouble getting a plea bargain as 'the buck presumably stopped with him,' former federal prosecutor says

• A plea bargain may be out of reach for Sam Bankman-Fried, according to a former federal prosecutor.
• Ian McGinley told CoinDesk that leniency is typically given for testimony against someone else, but it's unclear if SBF can point the finger at others.

Sam Bankman-Fried will have difficulty obtaining a favorable plea bargain given that he was the CEO of FTX before it collapsed, according to a former federal prosecutor.

Ian McGinley, who previously served as an assistant US Attorney in the Southern District of New York, told CoinDesk on Tuesday that winning leniency with prosecutors typically requires presenting evidence against someone else.

But it's unclear if Bankman-Fried can point the finger at others.

"The issue here that he faces is he is the head of FTX. The buck presumably stopped with him. So it's hard to see how he could cooperate at all," McGinley said.

Bankman-Fried stepped down as CEO last month, when FTX filed for bankruptcy amid reports that the exchange transferred billions in client funds to affiliate Alameda Research.

He could still offer a quick guilty plea, similar to what Bernie Madoff did in 2009 after his Ponzi scheme was exposed.

But Madoff got a substantial sentence anyway, McGinley noted, so "the options here are very limited" for Bankman-Fried. Madoff was sentenced to 150 years in prison.

Meanwhile, Bankman-Fried will have difficulty making a convincing case in front of a jury because two top witnesses are already cooperating with prosecutors.

Former Alameda CEO Caroline Ellison and FTX co-founder Gary Wang both pleaded guilty earlier this month to charges connected to the collapse of the world's second-largest cryptocurrency.

"Now you have two people – two insiders – who were with him, presumably during all of the pivotal moments at stake in the case saying 'We conspired with others, presumably Sam Bankman-Fried, and we intentionally did something wrong,'" McGinley said.

Last week, former Watergate prosecutor, Nick Akerman, suggested an interview with Yahoo Finance that Bankman-Fried should avoid a trial and push for a plea deal because the FTX founder has almost no chance of getting acquitted.

"It's going to be very tough, if not impossible, for him to go to trial on these charges," said Akerman, who also served as an assistant US Attorney in the Southern District of New York. "It seems to me that when you have two insiders that were that close to him basically laying out the scheme, it is almost virtually impossible to ever think that he could be acquitted by a jury."