Sam Bankman-Fried.
Chelsea Jia Feng
Sam Bankman-Fried has been sentenced to 25 years in prison.A jury convicted him of seven criminal counts, finding him guilty of fraud and money laundering.Bankman-Fried has been incarcerated in Brooklyn’s MDC since before his trial.
Sam Bankman-Fried, the disgraced cryptocurrency mogul, has finally learned his fate.
US District Judge Lewis Kaplan sentenced Bankman-Fried Thursday to 25 years in prison.
Bankman-Fried addressed the court ahead of his sentencing Thursday, admitting he “failed” and expressing remorse for letting down his former FTX colleagues who he said followed him “across the earth.”
The fallen cryptocurrency king apologized to his ex-FTX colleagues and told the court that he “failed everyone I care about and everything I cared about.”
“I threw away what they had built. They were let down. I’m sorry about that,” Bankman-Fried said. “I’m sorry about what happened at every stage.”
Before handing down the sentence to Bankman-Fried, Kaplan said that he wanted to prevent him from committing more harm.
“There is a risk that this man will be in a position to do something very bad in the future and it’s not a trivial risk, not a trivial risk at all,” he said.
Kaplan said that the sentence would be “for the purpose of disabling” Bankman-Fried “to the extent that can appropriately be done for a significant period of time.”
“He knew it was wrong,”
Bankman-Fried’s newly hired legal team, which is expected to appeal his conviction, had asked for a sentence of 6.5 years.
Thursday’s sentencing in Manhattan federal court followed a verdict where jurors found the 32-year-old guilty on seven counts of wire fraud, money laundering, and conspiracy charges in November after a six-week criminal trial.
Bankman-Fried faced a maximum of 110 years in prison following the collapse of FTX, his cryptocurrency exchange, where he was the CEO and cofounder. Prosecutors had asked for a sentence of between 40 and 50 years behind bars, comparing him to the Ponzi fraudster Bernie Madoff.
Federal prosecutors argued that Bankman-Fried and his inner circle of executives funneled customer funds to themselves by commingling money with Alameda Research, Bankman-Fried’s hedge fund, amounting to an $11 billion fraud scheme. They used those funds for advertising, tech investments, luxurious real estate in the Bahamas, and political donations to gain influence in Washington, DC. At the same time, Bankman-Fried and other executives lied to investors and lenders of FTX and Alameda Research about the truth of the company’s finances.
“This case has always been about lying, cheating, and stealing, and we have no patience for it,” US Attorney Damian Williams told reporters after the November verdict was read.
Shortly after FTX collapsed in November of 2022, other executives of his companies — including Caroline Ellison, Gary Wang, and Nishad Singh — quickly began cooperating with federal prosecutors in Manhattan, sealing Bankman-Fried’s fate. They all pleaded guilty to fraud charges and testified against him at trial, each explaining the inner workings of their scheme.
Now that Bankman-Fried’s sentencing is over, Kaplan, the judge, will likely swiftly order sentencing hearings for Ellison, Wang, and Singh. Prosecutors, as part of their cooperation agreement, have promised to ask the judge for light sentences. Ryan Salame, another FTX executive, who pleaded guilty to charges against him but did not cooperate with prosecutors, has a sentencing scheduled for May 1.
During his trial, Bankman-Fried made the rare decision to take the witness stand, though it didn’t appear to work in his favor.
Kaplan lost his patience with Bankman-Fried a few times, giving him terse instructions to answer questions directly. One attorney who advised his criminal defense team later said he “may be at the very top of the list as the worst person I’ve ever seen do a cross examination.”
Ahead of the sentencing hearing, Bankman-Fried’s attorneys argued that FTX’s customers didn’t actually lose money, pointing to a moment in a January hearing for FTX’s bankruptcy, where a lawyer said FTX customers and creditors “will eventually be paid in full.”
Prosecutors — and John J. Ray III, who took over as CEO of FTX to shepherd the company through the bankruptcy process — disputed that accounting, saying the quote was taken out of context.
“The value we hope to return to creditors would not exist without the tens of thousands of hours that dedicated professionals have spent digging through the rubble of Mr. Bankman-Fried’s sprawling criminal enterprise to unearth every possible dollar, token or other asset that was spent on luxury homes, private jets, overpriced speculative ventures, and otherwise lost to the four winds,” Ray wrote in a court filing ahead of the sentencing.
Federal prosecutors had also initially accused Bankman-Fried of campaign finance crimes, but later withdrew the charges. Judges in the Bahamas, where Bankman-Fried was extradited from to the US, ruled that the charges were not included in the extradition treaty between the two countries.
Prosecutors asked Kaplan to consider it in his sentencing anyway, writing that there was clear evidence Bankman-Fried went on a massive political bribing spree.
“His unlawful political donations to over 300 politicians and political action groups, amounting to in excess of $100 million, is believed to be the largest-ever campaign finance offense,” prosecutors wrote in their sentencing submission. “His bribe of Chinese government officials—totaling $150 million—was one of the single largest by an individual.”
Bankman-Fried has been incarcerated in Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Center since being remanded there prior to his trial. His parents, Joseph Bankman and Barbara Fried, submitted letters pleading for a lighter sentence, arguing that Bankman-Fried is neurodivergent and his “inability to read or respond appropriately to many social cues” could put him in danger.
