Former FTX CEO Enlists Expert Witness to Challenge DOJ Testimonies

According to Cointelegrapg: Sam Bankman-Fried, the former CEO of FTX, plans to employ a financial expert to contest the testimonies concerning the financial links between FTX and the trading firm, given by Caroline Ellison, the former Alameda Research CEO, and other witnesses.In a letter submitted to New York District Judge Lewis Kaplan on October 23, Bankman-Fried's attorneys specified that they would introduce Joseph Pimbley from PF2 Securities, a litigation consulting firm, to testify on the former FTX CEO's behalf.According to the plan outlined in the letter, Pimbley will provide evidence, derived from the FTX database, that Alameda's line of credit with FTX fluctuated from around $1 billion to $3 billion between October 2021 and September 2022. The credit line reportedly decreased in June 2022, an assertion intended to establish a precise timeline for the credit line.Pimbley's testimony will also include that a significant majority of the balances for non-FTX and non-Alameda users are in U.S. dollars, Bitcoin, Ether, and Tether. Additionally, over 75% of these user balances originate from accounts that enable spot margin, spot margin lending, or display futures activity. This element of the testimony could offer critical context to the statements made by the former FTX executives.The targeted testimonies include Ellison's claim that Alameda had an "essentially unlimited line of credit on FTX" and Gary Wang's, the FTX co-founder, assertion that the firm borrowed "around $3 billion" from the credit line.Pimbley's comprehensive 54-page report covers a variety of charts, spreadsheet snippets, diagrams, and database inquiries extracted from FTX's Amazon Web Services database relating to FTX's credit line with Alameda between October 2021 and November 2022.Pimbley is being compensated at a rate of $720 per hour, in addition to incurred expenses. However, he asserts that he has "no financial interest in the outcome of this case." Pimbley was previously among the seven expert witnesses proposed by Bankman-Fried's legal team. The judge barred them from testifying but permitted prospective testimonies should they address government witness testimony and clarify their assertions.