Nicolas Roos

Nicolas Roos conducted prosecution examinations of Gary Wang, Zac Prince, Nishad Singh, and Peter Easton, cross-examined defense witness Krystal Rolle, addressed evidentiary and sufficiency disputes, and delivered the government's closing argument. His work developed the prosecution's evidence concerning Alameda's special FTX account privileges, the use of customer assets, representations to lenders and investors, and Bankman-Fried's knowledge and intent.

During Wang's direct examination, Roos developed testimony about Alameda's undisclosed ability to maintain negative balances, its line of credit exceeding $65 billion, and the multibillion-dollar shortfall associated with customer assets. On redirect, he returned to the distinction between ordinary margin-related borrowing and Alameda's non-market-making withdrawals, the role of illiquid FTT in balance calculations, and Wang's cooperation history.

Roos's examinations of Prince focused on BlockFi's due diligence, its reliance on Alameda financial statements, and approximately $1 billion in combined Alameda and FTX exposure that was not returned. On redirect, he distinguished the identified wrong-way risk as involving Alameda and elicited further testimony about BlockFi's bankruptcy after the court overruled a defense objection. With Singh, Roos developed testimony about Alameda's privileges, the customer-fund shortfall, backdated entries, political-donation transfers, and public assurances during the November crisis, then used redirect to clarify cooperation records, financial arrangements, and Singh's reasons for considering resignation.

Through Easton, Roos presented financial tracing of fiat and cryptocurrency shortfalls and expenditures, along with testimony that spot-margin borrowing did not explain Alameda's negative balance. His redirect addressed the source of funds used for Genesis payments and whether the examined balances remained negative after accounting for other activity. His cross-examination of Rolle established that she lacked firsthand knowledge of FTX customer funds or spending and that her information began with events on November 12, 2022.

On Day 18, Roos argued that Bankman-Fried used two principal means to direct FTX customer assets to Alameda: undisclosed exchange-account privileges and customer fiat deposits routed into Alameda bank accounts. He relied on code records, spreadsheets, metadata, financial tracing, public statements, and witness testimony to argue that Bankman-Fried knew about the shortfall, continued spending, concealed the condition, issued misleading assurances during the withdrawal crisis, and testified falsely about his knowledge. Roos connected that evidence to the seven charges, urged the jury to consider contradictions between public assurances and internal knowledge, rebutted the defense's good-faith, eventual-repayment, and spot-margin arguments, and asked for guilty verdicts on every count.