Caroline Ellison, a former girlfriend and close associate of Sam Bankman-Fried, testified on Wednesday, expressing her fear that the truth would emerge and her sense of relief when the FTX crypto exchange collapsed last year.
Ellison, previously the co-CEO of Alameda Research, Bankman-Fried’s crypto hedge fund, tearfully revealed during the fraud trial that her ex-boyfriend had led her to engage in fraudulent activities.
According to Ellison’s testimony, Bankman-Fried instructed her to falsify Alameda’s balance sheets to keep lenders at bay during a cryptocurrency market downturn in 2022.
She said with emotion, “I felt a sense of relief that I didn’t have to lie anymore.”
Ellison, who has admitted to assisting in the misappropriation of billions of FTX customer assets, disclosed that these manipulated balance sheets concealed the fact that Alameda had borrowed around $10 billion in FTX customer funds.
The Stanford University graduate also revealed that Bankman-Fried had directed her to use the fund’s line of credit on the FTX cryptocurrency exchange to repay loans in June 2022.
During her testimony, Ellison stressed that Bankman-Fried did not uphold principles like “don’t lie” and “don’t steal.” She described him as a “utilitarian” who believed that the most important rule was to achieve the greatest good for the greatest number of people.
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