Enlarge / Former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried arrives for a bail revocation hearing at US District Court on August 11, 2023, in New York City. (credit: Getty Images | Michael Santiago)

Sam Bankman-Fried's criminal trial is beginning this week with jury selection on Tuesday morning. SBF, the 31-year-old man behind bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange FTX, is facing seven criminal charges with maximum sentences adding up to 110 years.

"Your client in the event of conviction could be looking at a very long sentence," US District Judge Lewis Kaplan told SBF's lawyers in a hearing on Thursday while rejecting the defense's request for a temporary release from jail. "If things begin to look bleak... maybe the time would come when he would seek to flee," Kaplan said, according to a Reuters article .

Bankman-Fried was previously under house arrest but was sent to jail in August after his bail was revoked. In their request for a temporary release, SBF's lawyers said the "case is highly technical and complex, and we need our client to help us understand the facts and explain many of the issues. He alone knows the facts which are also critical in preparing his defense."

Enlarge / Joseph Bankman, father of former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, leaves after a bail hearing for his son at US District Court on August 11, 2023 in New York City.

Barbara Fried, mother of former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried. (credit: Getty Images | Michael M. Santiago)

FTX yesterday sued Sam Bankman-Fried's parents, alleging that Joseph Bankman and Barbara Fried "exploited their access and influence within the FTX enterprise to enrich themselves" at the expense of FTX customers.

FTX's lawsuit against Bankman and Fried was filed in US Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware as part of bankruptcy proceedings involving FTX and Alameda Research. "Bankman and Fried siphoned millions of dollars out of the FTX Group for their own personal benefit and their chosen pet causes. This action seeks to hold them accountable for their misconduct and recover assets for the Debtors' creditors," the lawsuit claimed.

The civil lawsuit was filed about two weeks before Bankman-Fried's criminal trial was scheduled to begin on October 3. Four former FTX executives already pleaded guilty to criminal charges.

Enlarge / Bored Ape NFTs can now be purchased for just $50,000 each. (credit: Sotheby's)

The Sotheby's auction house has been named as a defendant in a lawsuit filed by investors who regret buying Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs that sold for highly inflated prices during the NFT craze in 2021. A Sotheby's auction duped investors by giving the Bored Ape NFTs "an air of legitimacy... to generate investors' interest and hype around the Bored Ape brand," the class-action lawsuit claims.

The boost to Bored Ape NFT prices provided by the auction "was rooted in deception," said the lawsuit filed in US District Court for the Central District of California. It wasn't revealed at the time of the auction that the buyer was the now-disgraced FTX, the lawsuit said.

"Sotheby's representations that the undisclosed buyer was a 'traditional' collector had misleadingly created the impression that the market for BAYC NFTs had crossed over to a mainstream audience," the lawsuit claimed. Lawsuit plaintiffs say that harmed investors bought the NFTs "with a reasonable expectation of profit from owning them."

Enlarge / Sam Bankman-Fried. (credit: Bloomberg / Contributor | Bloomberg )

A federal judge in New York today ordered disgraced FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried's to jail after revoking his bail, The New York Times reported .

Bankman-Fried had been under house arrest, but prosecutors convinced Judge Lewis A. Kaplan of the Federal District Court in Manhattan that Bankman-Fried had fed documents to the media in order to intimidate a witness in the case. Now Bankman-Fried has to prepare his defense to 13 criminal charges from jail.

In June, Bankman-Fried filed a motion to dismiss, hoping that some of those charges would be dropped. But Kaplan decided that his arguments in the motion were "either moot or without merit,” CNN reported .

Enlarge (credit: Yossakorn Kaewwannarat | iStock / Getty Images Plus )

Today, the European Union approved a comprehensive set of cryptocurrency regulations seeking to lay the groundwork for how crypto is regulated globally. The rules—which make providers liable if they lose investors' crypto assets—will go into effect in 2024 across 27 EU member states.

"I am very pleased that today we are delivering on our promise to start regulating the crypto-assets sector," Elisabeth Svantesson, Sweden's minister of finance, said in a press release. "Recent events have confirmed the urgent need for imposing rules which will better protect Europeans who have invested in these assets and prevent the misuse of crypto industry for the purposes of money laundering and financing of terrorism."

Among recent events spurring the legislative push was the collapse of FTX , Mairead McGuinness, the European commissioner for financial services, told CNBC late last year. FTX was one of the world's largest cryptocurrency exchanges, and its implosion led to $8 billion in customer losses, the United States Commodity Futures Trading Commission estimated .

Enlarge (credit: Drew Angerer / Staff | Getty Images North America )

Late Monday, legally embroiled FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried moved to dismiss the majority of criminal charges lobbed against him by the United States government after his cryptocurrency exchange went bankrupt in 2022.

In documents filed in a Manhattan federal court, the law firm Sullivan & Cromwell shared Bankman-Fried's first official legal defense. Lawyers accused the US of a "troubling" and "classic rush to judgment," claiming that the government didn't even wait to receive "millions of documents" and "other evidence" against Bankman-Fried before "improperly seeking" to turn "civil and regulatory issues into federal crimes."

After FTX's collapse last year, federal prosecutors acted quickly to intervene, within a month alleging that Bankman-Fried was stealing billions in customer funds , defrauding investors, committing bank and wire fraud, providing improper loans, misleading lenders, transmitting money without a license, making illegal campaign contributions, bribing China officials , and other crimes. Through it all, Bankman-Fried has pleaded not guilty. Now, in his motion to dismiss, Bankman-Fried has requested an oral argument to "fight these baseless charges" and "clear his name." He's asking the court to dismiss 10 out of 13 charges, arguing that federal prosecutors have failed to substantiate most of their claims.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | Bloomberg)

The FBI on Thursday reportedly searched the home of former FTX executive Ryan Salame, who ran the failed cryptocurrency exchange's Bahamian subsidiary and was a major campaign donor to Republicans. Yesterday morning's search of Salame's $4 million home in Potomac, Maryland, was reported by The New York Times and Bloomberg , with both media outlets citing anonymous sources.

Salame hasn't been charged with a crime but was a member of FTX founder and former CEO Sam Bankman-Fried's inner circle. Salame received $87 million in payments and loans from FTX entities, the exchange's new leadership said last month .

It's unclear what FBI agents were looking for at Salame's house, but the search "signals that federal authorities are not done with their investigation into FTX's collapse as they prepare for Mr. Bankman-Fried's trial set in October," the Times wrote. "They are scrutinizing an array of employees and advisers in the former crypto mogul's orbit, including Mr. Bankman-Fried's younger brother."