By Luc Cohen
NEW YORK (Reuters) -A U.S. judge on Tuesday denied Sam Bankman-Fried’s bid to have criminal charges against him thrown out, paving the way for the founder of now-bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange FTX to face trial starting Oct. 2.
Federal prosecutors in Manhattan say Bankman-Fried, 31, stole billions of dollars in FTX customer funds to plug losses at his hedge fund, Alameda Research, misled investors and lenders, and illegally made contributions to U.S. political campaigns in the names of his colleagues.
The onetime billionaire has pleaded not guilty. He has acknowledged inadequate risk management at FTX, but denies stealing funds.
In May, Bankman-Fried asked U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan to dismiss at least 11 of the 13 fraud and conspiracy charges he faced.
He argued that some were based on a legal theory of fraud that has been invalidated by the U.S. Supreme Court, and that some were improperly brought without consent from the Bahamas, where he was arrested in December and extradited to the United States.
“The arguments are either moot or without merit,” Kaplan wrote in a ruling on Thursday.
A spokesman for Bankman-Fried did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
(Reporting by Luc Cohen in New York, editing by Deepa Babington)