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In a closing argument, a prosecutor told New York jurors Wednesday to follow the overwhelming evidence of FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried 's “pyramid of deceit” to find him guilty of defrauding customers and investors of at least $10 billion, while a defense lawyer said prosecutors were unfairly portraying an honest entrepreneur as a monster, Reuters reported. Assistant U.S. Attorney Nicolas Roos launched a day of closings in Manhattan federal court by saying Bankman-Fried was at fault for stealing billions of dollars from investors worldwide despite four days of testimony in which Bankman-Fried insisted that he was unaware that his customers' deposits were at risk until weeks before his companies collapsed. “He told a story and he lied to you,” Roos told jurors a day after Bankman-Fried concluded his testimony at the monthlong trial. The prosecutor said Bankman-Fried wanted jurors to believe that he had no idea what was happening at his companies or what was happening was wrong, but that his words conflicted with the testimony of his fellow executives, his “partners in crime,” and other evidence including financial documents and public statements Bankman-Fried had made.

Lordstown Motors Corp. on Tuesday got the green light from a Delaware bankruptcy court judge to begin soliciting votes for the electric vehicle developer’s plan of bankruptcy reorganization, the Cleveland Business Journal reported. U.S. Bankruptcy Court Judge Mary Walrath approved Lordstown Motors’ disclosure statement — the document that contains detailed information to enable a creditor to make an informed decision about the debtor’s plan of reorganization — during a Tuesday morning hearing. Lordstown Motors and its attorneys will use the disclosure statement to solicit votes from creditors and shareholders to approve or reject the company’s plan to emerge from bankruptcy court, likely late this year or early next year.

Water Gremlin Co., rattled in recent years by pollution scandals, has filed for chapter 11 protection and is in the process of trying to sell the company, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reported. The White Bear Township, Minn.-based company, founded in 1949, makes lead battery terminals and fishing sinkers. Water Gremlin had significant clashes with regulators in 2019 over pollution from its facility. The company had to pay more than $7 million in fines to the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) over toxic air emissions. The MPCA's commissioner at the time said the company "put people's health at risk." The MPCA levied another $325,000 fine in 2021 over alleged violations of hazardous waste and industrial storm water rules. The MPCA issued a new air emissions permit with "more stringent emissions limits and operating requirements" to the Water Gremlin facility in June. In July, Tokyo-based Okabe Co. Ltd., parent company of Water Gremlin, said that the litigation could lead to Water Gremlin "incurring substantial liability." An affidavit filed in the bankruptcy case cites possible liability from lawsuits related to the pollution cases and a decline in sales. The company's sales fell from $57.8 million in 2018 to $46.8 million in 2022, according to the court papers.

Hwa Yuan Szechuan, one of Manhattan’s most critically acclaimed Chinese restaurants, filed for bankruptcy on Monday, a sign of the pressures that restaurants around the country are facing as they fight to keep their slice of consumers’ stretched food budgets, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. Started by Taiwanese immigrant Yu Fa Tang in the late 1960s, Hwa Yuan has operated in its current location in New York’s Chinatown since 2018. Famed for popularizing cold sesame noodles in the U.S. and frequented by A-list celebrities such as Jennifer Lawrence and Gwyneth Paltrow, the restaurant hasn’t recovered from the impact of COVID-19-related lockdowns on its finances, according to court papers. Even though it received a publicity boost when former New York Mayor Bill de Blasio visited the restaurant in February 2021 to promote the resumption of indoor dining in New York City, Hwa Yuan defaulted on its mortgage because of its pandemic-related loss of revenue and now faces an imminent foreclosure from its mortgage lender, according to court papers. The restaurant’s bankruptcy filing in New York’s Southern District will stave off the foreclosure and give the Tang family time to find a new loan that could repay the defaulted mortgage, court papers said.

Stroock & Stroock & Lavan, one of New York’s oldest large law firms, is planning to dissolve after losing attorneys to rivals and a series of failed merger talks, the Wall Street Journal reported. The news comes after another firm, Hogan Lovells, agreed to hire more than 30 of Stroock’s partners last week, including co-managing partner Jeff Keitelman and the firm’s elite real estate team. Keitelman and co-managing partner Alan Klinger said in an email on behalf of the executive committee Monday that the move for many of the partners to join Hogan Lovells will “offer the best opportunities and growth potential for the most members of our firm.” A plan to dissolve the firm will move forward, the email said, after partners voted last week to authorize the executive committee to dissolve the firm. The firm said that the Hogan Lovells option amounted to a large-scale lateral acquisition, rather than a merger. Hogan Lovells in a statement last week said that the partners are expected to close their agreements in mid-November.

The recent spate of wet weather has been nothing short of disastrous for many upstate New York apple-picking farms that make most of their annual income from tourists filling bags with Galas, McIntoshes and Granny Smiths during two months, the New York Times reported. Nearly 11 inches of rain have fallen on the region in September and October, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, 33 percent above normal. But those numbers don’t capture the true extent of the bad luck: The wettest days have disproportionately fallen on weekends, when pick-your-own farms receive most of their visitors. Commercial orchard crews work rain or shine, and this year’s downpours haven’t kept them from getting the apples off the trees. The general public, though, prefers to pick apples in nice weather. Normally the apple picking season closes at the end of October, but with so much fruit left on the trees this year, some farms are planning to extend into November, hoping the weather will stay warm enough to preserve the picking for another week or two. Most, however, have resigned themselves to the idea that there’s no chance of making up for all the income they’ve lost. For some, that will mean taking on new debt, or delaying repairs, or putting off equipment purchases for another year.