The trial of Sam Bankman-Fried's girlfriend is set to feature

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The trial of Sam Bankman-Fried's girlfriend is set to feature

If you like courtroom dramas, you don't find anything on TV to rival what is expected to take place in Manhattan today. That's the setting for FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried's ongoing fraud trial, where his one-time girlfriend is expected to take the stand and testify that he oversaw the raiding of billions of dollars in customer funds.

Caroline Ellison, a recent Fortune profile, told the New York Times that she found talking to other people 'unpleasant' and, in the words of one friend, is someone who would marry her math homework. She also ran Bankman-Fried's hedge fund, Alameda Research, which had an unlimited line of credit from FTX-credit that included customer money spent on crypto trades, real estate, and political donations, and has since gone missing.

As the trial began last week, the jury heard from Bankman-Fried's longtime friends and lieutenants at FTX, who testified that he signed off on a 'back door' in the exchange's computer code to allow Alameda to trade without losses. The testimony was damning, and Ellison's is likely to prove even worse.

Tiffany Fong, a journalist who was a confidant of Bankman-Fried in the days before his arrest, has released a video depicting Ellison's allocution-the speech she gave while submitting her guilty plea-that will likely also form part of her testimony. Ellison's words describe financial chicanery carried out by Bankman-Fried and on his behalf, including a series of shifty loans made by the hedge fund to FTX executives in order to mask the raiding of customer funds.

The accuracy of Fong's account is unknown, given that it hasn't surfaced in court documents, but it's likely reliable given her previous access to Bankman-Fried. It also will be in keeping with the FTX founder, who previously gave Ellison's private diary to the New York Times to publish--a stunt that the judge took as an attempt to intimidate a witness and led him to revoke Bankman-Fried's bail.

It's likely that Bankman-Fried's lawyers will try to cast in doubt on Ellison by saying her testimony is informed by spite over her onetime partner. In fact, there is evidence the relationship wasn't a happy one for her, with pages from author Michael Lewis' new book that reprint memos she wrote to Bankman-Fried outlining her frustration that he did not want to take their relationship public.

It's all a lot to take in, he said. The jury will likely hear Ellison's intricate details of a massive corporate fraud, but also hear sordid details of a crummy boyfriend who would not commit and took the caddish steps of publishing her private heartbreak to the whole internet. It's really the stuff of courtroom drama, I said.

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