Caroline Ellison took the witness stand Tuesday afternoon and within minutes pointed to her former boss and boyfriend, FTX co-founder Sam Bankman-Fried, as the man responsible for the loss of billions in customer funds and the collapse of the cryptocurrency platform.
"He’s over there wearing a suit,” the former chief executive officer of Alameda Research said, acknowledging Bankman-Fried across the courtroom. "He directed me to commit these crimes,” she told jurors at a federal court in New York.
In her first day of testimony, Ellison, 28, portrayed Bankman-Fried as the brains behind the company operations, who knowingly transferred over $14 billion of FTX customer funds to the sister hedge fund, directed her to ignore concerns about auditors, and knowingly inflated Alameda’s balance sheet to secure loans.