U.S. prosecutors on Monday said they opposed a motion by former cryptocurrency billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried to dismiss criminal charges accusing him of stealing billions of dollars from customers to plug losses at his hedge fund.

In early May, Bankman-Fried asked U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan to dismiss 10 of the charges, with his lawyers arguing that several cryptocurrency companies went bankrupt last year and prosecutors rushed to judgment. However, prosecutors argued in a filing on Monday that the motion to dismiss the charges was "meritless" and legally defective.

Fried's lawyers made meritless arguments in a bid to convince a judge to toss out criminal charges alleging that the FTX founder stole from investors in his multibillion-dollar cryptocurrency fund.