BY LARRY NEUMEISTER
Sam Bankman-Fried, a tech wunderkind who once promoted his FTX digital coin exchange as a safe way for regular people to get into cryptocurrency, faces the start of a criminal trial over allegations that he cheated thousands of customers.
Jury selection begins Tuesday in New York in a case in which the 31-year-old crypto mogul, once a billionaire, faces the possibility of a long prison term.
Prosecutors say he defrauded thousands of people who deposited cryptocurrency on the FTX exchange by illegally diverting massive sums of their money for his personal use, including making risky trades at his cryptocurrency hedge fund, Alameda Research.
He’s also accused of using customer money to buy real estate and make big political contributions as he tried to influence government regulation of cryptocurrency.
U.S. Attorney Damian Williams, who is overseeing the prosecution, has called it one of the biggest frauds in the
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