Caroline Ellison Spotted In New York

PLEASE CONFIRM: A user claims that they spotted Caroline Ellison at Ground Support Coffee on West Broad in SoHo Manhattan at 8:15 AM. This would mean she is not in Hong Kong and is in NY not in custody. pic.twitter.com/QUduYO9GfZ

— Autism Capital 🧩 (@AutismCapital) December 4, 2022

According to this story,

The citizen journalist also shared pictures of messages sent that also said a source was “99%” sure “it’s her.” The message also says there’s an “Alameda person” with her. In addition to the confirmations from the barista behind the counter, there’s also the sighting of a Golden Doodle puppy pictured at the bottom of the ostensible Ellison’s feet. FTX and Alameda executives shared a Golden Doodle pup called “Gopher.” SBF recently tweeted about Gopher before FTX collapsed.

. . . People also shared street maps showing that the coffee and sandwich shop was really close to the New York Attorney’s Office and the FBI. “After a close analysis, she’s snitching on Sam,” one person wrote. Since FTX collapsed, Ellison has been super silent about the situation, while SBF has been doing a media tour and speaking candidly.

The first thing to observe is that this is unconfirmed, and it's entirely speculative. On the other hand, true crime fans like me have seen enough scenes of detectives interviewing perps to know that they sell them on confessions by saying the first one in gets the best deal, and according to this story,

Ellison has been radio silent: no weeping lamentations on social media, no NYT interviews, no on-stage appearances. These approaches have obviously led to dramatically different optics. While Bankman-Fried was callously confessing to Vox that his effective altruism shtick was a front, Ellison was nowhere to be seen. And now it seems that as Bankman-Fried was spending this past weekend with the FT, clumsily walking back his prior statements about not knowing anything about Alameda’s financial health, Ellison was spending her time where it matters: in front of investigators.

. . . Unfortunately for Bankman-Fried, it seems Ellison got there first.

Nevertheless, assuming any of this speculation is true, Ellison would still be a problem for the prosecution, as well as for the conventional narrative. It seems to me that her defense could call any number of witnesses, not least of whom would be new CEO John Ray, to testify that in their judgment, nobody at the FTX condo was above intern level. Ray has already noted in his bankruptcy filing that the people running FTX (I would add "putatively") were "a very small group of inmxperienced, unsophisticated, and potentially compromised individuals", and if this applies to Sam Bankman-Fried, it applies as well to Caroline Ellison. He also said in the filing, "many of the employees of the FTX Group, including some of its senior executives, were not aware of the shortfalls or potential commingling of digital assets", and overall, he has been skeptical of any statements from prior FTX employees about the company's financial operations.

As far as I can tell as a lay observer, I think a judge would also allow Bankman-Fried's defense to cross-examine Ellison on what medications she had been prescribed, for what conditions, and what the potential side effects were. If it were established that she was being treated for adult ADHD, it seems to me that the defense would be entitled to call expert witnesses to testify that symptoms include carelessness, lack of attention to detail, inability to focus, and forgetfulness, which could undermine any specific testimony she might give against Sam, especially if her airhead demeanor we've seen in video clips is what she displays on the witness stand.

So far, the conventional narrative has been that Sam was the criminal mastermind, and Ellison was his dupe. At minimum, Sam is doing precisely what attorneys would tell him not to do, making copious public statements in interviews and on social media that could potentially damage him. However, his statements have been consistent, suggesting he didn't in fact know what was going on, and this in turn is consistent with remarks by John Ray and other informed observers of the FTX "insiders" at the Bahamas condo, that they were inexperienced, unsophisicated, and intern-level.

In that case, we've got to assume someone else was running the show; neither Sam nor Caroline actually knew what do do with the billions at their disposal, and to have either testify against the other is a futile exercise. I continue to think a shadow group was calling the shots, likely associated with the Professors Bankman and Fried, and possibly including the Ellison parents. They were criminals, which means their swindle would eventually be found out, but they were at least smart enough to carry it off for several years, which neither Sam nor Caroline had the actual ability to do.

For now, though, it's in the interest of neither the media nor the prosecution to pursue this line.