Sam Bankman-Fried seeks expert to counter testimony from DOJ witnesses

Sam Bankman-Fried’s lawyers are planning to put forward an expert witness to counter testimony from former Alameda Research CEO Caroline Ellison and other witnesses about the extent of financial ties between FTX and the trading firm.

In an Oct. 23 letter to New York District Judge Lewis Kaplan, Bankman-Fried’s attorneys said Joseph Pimbley from litigation consulting firm PF2 Securities would testify on behalf of the former FTX CEO.

The letter lays out that Pimbley will testify — based on FTX database information — that Alameda’s line of credit with FTX “fluctuated between approximately $1 billion and $3 billion” between October 2021 and September 2022 and decreased in June 2022, which has the goal of establishing a definitive timeline for the line of credit.

Pimbley will also testify that the majority of balances for non-FTX and non-Alameda users are in United States dollars, Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH) and Tether (USDT), and over 75% of non-FTX and Alameda user balances “arise from accounts that have spot margin enabled, spot margin lending enabled, or show futures activity,” which could provide context to testimony made by former FTX executives.

The testimony is also set to rebuff a testimony by Ellison, FTX co-founder Gary Wang, former FTX engineering director Nishad Singh and former FTX employee Adam Yedidia regarding Alameda’s line of credit and FTX customer use of margin trading.

Pimbley is set to counter Ellison’s testimony that Alameda had “an essentially unlimited line of credit on FTX” and Wang’s testimony that the firm had borrowed “around $3 billion” from the credit line.

Related: FTX creditor claims breach the 50c mark as buyers see light at the end of the tunnel

Pimbley’s 54-page disclosure details various charts, spreadsheet excerpts, diagrams and database queries pulled from FTX’s Amazon Web Services database that relate to FTX’s line of credit with Alameda between October 2021 and November 2022.

Pimbley is being remunerated at a rate of $720 an hour plus expenses for his work, but he said he has “no financial interest in the outcome of this case.”

He was one of seven expert witnesses earlier put forward by Bankman-Fried’s legal team, which Judge Kaplan barred from testifying but allowed future testimony if they were to respond to government witness testimony and clarify their claims.

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