Prosecutors said they were having trouble analyzing a laptop for their case against Sam Bankman-Fried.
It contains so much data that it takes weeks to extract the information, they said Thursday.
Sam Bankman-Fried has pleaded not guilty to federal prosecutors’ new charges against him.
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Prosecutors have encountered a stumbling block in evaluating the extensive data in their criminal case against Sam Bankman-Fried.
In a hearing in federal court in Manhattan Thursday morning, Assistant US Attorney Nicholas Roos said the FBI was struggling to extract data from a laptop they received from the founder of bankrupt crypto exchange FTX.
It takes weeks just to extract Slack messages from the laptop, Roos said, and even longer for the rest of the data on the device. Because of its size, Roos said, the device had to be “virtually” disassembled and extracted in parts for prosecutors to analyze.
Because of the size of the device, the Justice Department hasn’t even been able to begin a rights review to determine what kind of data prosecutors are allowed to use in their criminal case against Bankman-Fried.
The FBI, whose representative attended the hearing, did not immediately respond to Business Insider’s request for comment before publication.
Mark Cohen, an attorney representing Bankman-Fried, told US District Judge Lewis Kaplan that he was “concerned” about how prosecutors would deal with the contents of the laptop and may raise the issue with the judge again.
“This involves a cooperating witness who may appear as a witness at trial,” Cohen said.
Prosecutors have already provided about six million pages worth of material to Bankman-Fried’s legal team, Roos said at the hearing.
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Bankman-Fried was in court Thursday to plead guilty to the new The charge to deliver that unveiled this week and in which prosecutors accused him of attempting to bribe Chinese officials with more than $40 million in cryptocurrency in 2021. He pleaded not guilty to all counts.
Prosecutors issued a detailed indictment to Bankman-Fried back in February detailing how the former crypto billionaire negotiated his status at the head of a crypto empire. He relied on FTX executives to channel political donations both sides of the aisle, according to prosecutors, saying he did so to sway potential crypto industry regulation in his favor.
In the latest 13-count indictment, prosecutors added a count of conspiracy to violate the anti-corruption provisions of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, alleging that Bankman-Fried had engaged in the scheme to try to freeze the ones in China trading accounts of his other company, Alameda Research.
On Thursday, Cohen told the court he would challenge the government’s right to seek additional charges after Bankman-Fried had already been extradited to the United States.
“As Mr. Cohen said in court, we will challenge the new charges when the motions are filed,” a Bankman-Fried representative told Insider.
The charges Bankman-Fried faces have combined maximum sentences of more than 100 years. Kaplan has set his trial for October.
If Bankman-Fried is convicted, the actual sentence is ultimately Kaplan’s decision. Federal judges follow sentencing guidelines set by a Pre-Sentence Department, part of the US Parole Board, which works for the federal court.
Federal prosecutors have been developing their case quickly since FTX filed for bankruptcy in November, releasing a brief indictment in December. Prosecutors have also reached settlements with FTX co-founder Gary Wang, former Alameda CEO Caroline Ellison, and former FTX chief engineer Nishad Singh.
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