Sam Bankman Fried should be sentenced to 40 to 50 years in prison after being found guilty of stealing $8 billion from customers of bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange FTX, prosecutors said Friday. Announced.
“His life in recent years was one of unparalleled greed and arrogance; ambition and rationalization; and repeated risky gambling with other people’s money,” federal prosecutors in Manhattan wrote. “And to this day Mr. Bankman Freed refuses to admit that what he did was wrong.”
A jury convicted Bankman Fried, 32, of seven counts of fraud and conspiracy in November. Bankman-Fried could face up to 110 years in prison for the crime, and his lawyers argued last month that the sentence would be “grotesque”.
The rise and fall of Bankman Freed became one of the largest financial fraud cases in modern history. Bankman Fried became the public face of cryptocurrencies, establishing himself as an emerging powerbroker in Washington before becoming a symbol of the industry’s potential for underregulation and misplaced hype.
Bankman Fried’s company FTX was once one of the world’s largest crypto exchanges, valued at $32 billion in 2022. It catapulted into the mainstream through high-profile marketing campaigns that included celebrities like Larry David and Tom Brady appearing in Super Bowl commercials. Bankman Freed is known for always wearing cargo shorts, T-shirts and unkempt hair, appearing at events with political heavyweights such as Bill Clinton and Tony Blair.
In a high-profile trial last year, prosecutors identified him as a reckless billionaire who tried to cover up his financial failures while siphoning money from investors to enrich himself. Several of his former executives, with whom he had an on-again, off-again relationship, all testified against him, including his estranged girlfriend, Caroline Ellison.
“This case has always been about lies, deception and theft, and we cannot tolerate that,” prosecutors said during the trial.
Lawyers for the former billionaire told U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan that a sentence of five years and four months to six and a half years in prison was appropriate. They said FTX customers would get most of their funds back and that Bankman Freed was not aiming to steal.
“Sam is a 31-year-old first-time, non-violent offender who was joined in the act by at least four other offenders, but in this case the victim is ready to bounce back. Always ready to bounce back’ – 100 cents on the dollar,” Bankman Freed’s attorneys argued in pre-sentence filings.
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Major cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum have rallied over the past year, even as the downfall of Bankman Fried and other crypto scandals drew intense industry scrutiny. Bitcoin hit an all-time high this month, hitting a record price of around $73,000.
Judge Kaplan is scheduled to sentence Bankman Fried on March 28 in Manhattan federal court. Bankman Freed plans to appeal the conviction and sentence.
