Second Circuit Reportedly Unmoved, Skeptical and Dubious of Bankman-Fried's Claims on Appeal

Appeals Court Seems Unmoved by Sam Bankman-Fried’s Claims of an Unfair Trial

Former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried’s chances of getting a fresh trial seem to be dwindling, judging by the pointed questions of an appellate court during a hearing in Manhattan on Tuesday.

Bankman-Fried’s lawyer Alexandra Shapiro told the trio of Second Circuit judges that the high-profile trial was “fundamentally unfair” because her client was prevented by District Judge Lewis Kaplan from telling the jury his side of the story, or presenting the 17 jurors with “objective evidence” that FTX was, in fact, solvent at the time it filed for bankruptcy following its spectacular collapse in November 2022.

First Brands Founder Accused of Looting Company

At first, the sales invoice said $179.84. Later, the bill said $9,271.25 – 50 times more.

It was one more trick in a series of alleged ruses – from fudged numbers and questionable collateral, to off-balance-sheet financing and a company slush fund — at First Brands Group, company advisers now claim.

Directing it all, First Brands’ bankruptcy lawyers alleged Monday, was founder Patrick James. The Malaysian-born businessman persuaded prominent Wall Street firms to lend vast sums to his auto-parts company and then misappropriated millions, if not billions, of that money, their lawsuit claims.

Robinhood GC Lucas Moskowitz Shows ‘Unflappable’ Crisis Skills

When Lucas Moskowitz arrived at Robinhood in 2020 as deputy GC and head of a small government affairs team, he was taking on a lot.

Platform outages. An SEC probe. The death of a man trading on the platform. The electronic trading firm was growing quickly, and under a lot of scrutiny.

It was July 2020, the height of the pandemic. Moskowitz and his boss Dan Gallagher, the company’s new chief legal officer, were part of a small team based out of a WeWork in downtown DC.

“I came into a company that was growing really fast and dealing with a lot,” Moskowitz said. It wasn’t the first time he’d taken a job placing him at the center of a whirlwind. He was Securities and Exchange Commission counsel from 2010 to 2013, where he worked on enforcement and implementing the Dodd-Frank Act, the sweeping law enacted in response to the 2008 financial crisis.

Moskowitz has since risen to senior vice president, general counsel, and corporate secretary at Robinhood—a fast-growing company operating in a heavily regulated space, financial services, but also in emerging areas where policy is lagging technological innovation, like crypto. The company also now has its own DC office.

Moskowitz’s experience in quickly changing regulatory environments, particularly at the SEC, “really well prepared him to lead Robinhood through these similar shifts in the fintech world, and ensuring that the company adapts while protecting the mission to democratize finance,” said Mark Greene, a Cravath, Swaine & Moore partner serving as Robinhood’s outside counsel who knows Moskowitz from his SEC days.

‘Smart Window’ Maker View’s Ex-CFO Loses Bid to Toss SEC Charges

The former chief financial officer of “smart window” manufacturer View Inc. must face SEC claims that he used erroneous accounting practices to report the costs of fixing defective windows.

Vidul Prakash had his own bid for summary judgment against the Securities and Exchange Commission rebuffed Monday by Judge Beth Labson Freeman in the US District Court for the Northern District of California.

“A reasonable jury could conclude that Prakash’s alleged failure to convey View’s decision to cover all installation costs to the accounting team was a proximate cause of the alleged misstatement,” Freeman said.

Out of FINRA’s Sight, ‘Bad Brokers’ Keep Working in Financial Services

Brokers barred by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority because of misconduct may be tossed out of the brokerage industry, but many set up shop in insurance — often in annuity sales — where they continue to misbehave, according to a new research paper.

The paper, “Regulatory leakage among financial advisors: Evidence from FINRA regulation of ‘‘bad’’ brokers,” was penned by former SEC Commissioner Robert Jackson along with Edwin Hu, a former Securities and Exchange Commission economist who’s now a professor at University of Virginia School of Law, and Colleen Honigsberg, professor at Stanford Law School. It was published in the Journal of Financial Economics.

“This paper confirms that enforcement by FINRA does not remove bad actors from financial services,” Adam Gana, president of the Public Investors Advocate Bar Association, told ThinkAdvisor Friday in an email. “Enforcement and barring brokers simply displaces them into the insurance channel. Barred and high-risk brokers overwhelmingly reappear as insurance producers, investment advisors, and annuity marketers, where oversight is weaker and consumer harm can persist outside FINRA’s jurisdiction.”